Terry Gene Carr - Warlord of Kor

T >> Terry Gene Carr >> Warlord of Kor

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"Perhaps. But we weren't supposed to know that they were in contact with
the Outsiders, either--that was probably part of the purpose of the
block in the race-memory. But we got through the block, and they know
it, and presumably by now the Outsiders know it. That changes the
picture, and I'd like to know just how much it changes it."

"They're not in contact with the Outsiders any longer," said Rynason.

"What makes you so sure of that?"

"Tebron broke the contact--that was in the orders too. The priesthood,
which had been the connecting link with the Outsiders through the
machine, was disbanded. When Tebron died he didn't appoint a successor;
the machine hasn't been used since."

Manning thought about that, still frowning. "Where is the machine?"

"I don't know. If it hasn't been kept in repair it might not even be
usable any more, wherever it is."

"I'll tell you something, Lee," said Manning. "There's still too much
that we don't know--and too much that the Hirlaji _do_ know, now.
Whether or not your horse-buddy was picking your brains, they know we're
not as strong as they thought we were. It took us eight thousand years
to get here instead of five thousand. Let's just hope they don't think
about that too much."

He stopped, and paced to the window again. "Look around you, Lee--out on
the street, in the town. We've hardly put our feet down on this planet;
we've got very little in the way of weapons with us and it will take
weeks to get any more in here; there's practically no organization here
yet. We could be wiped off this planet before we knew what hit us. We're
sitting ducks."

He came back to stand before Rynason. "And what about the Outsiders?
They think of us strictly in terms of war, and they've been keeping
themselves away from us all this time. That's obviously why they pulled
out of this sector of space. Up until now we'd thought they were dead.
But now we find they've been in contact with this planet ... all right,
it was eight thousand years ago. But that's a lot more recent than the
last evidences we've had of them, and they've obviously been watching
us.

"Now, you've been in direct contact with the horses' minds; you've
practically been one of them yourself, for awhile. All right, what's
their reaction going to be when they realize that the Outsiders, their
god, overestimated us? What will they do?"

Rynason thought about that. He tried to remember the minds he had
touched during the linkage with Horng: Tebron, the ancient warrior-king,
and the young Hirlaji staring at the buildings of one of the ancient
cities, and the old, dying one who had decided not to plant again one
year ... and Horng himself, tired and calm on the edge of the Flat, amid
the ruins of a city. He remembered the others in that crumbling last
home of an entire race ... slow, quiet, uncaring.

"I don't think they'll do anything. They wouldn't see any point to it."
He paused, remembering. "They lost all their purpose eight thousand
years ago," he said quietly.

Manning grunted. "Somehow I lack your touching faith in them."

"And somehow," Rynason said, "I lack your burning ambition to find an
enemy, a handy menace to crush. You argue too hard, Manning."

Manning raised an eyebrow. "I suppose I haven't even put a doubt in your
mind about them? Not one doubt?"

Rynason turned away and didn't answer.

Manning sighed. "Maybe it's time I went out there myself and had a
seance with the horses." He set down his glass of brandy, which he had
been turning in his hand as he spoke. "Lee, I want you to check back
here with me in two hours ... by then I should have things straightened
up and ready to go."

He strode to the supply closet at one end of the room and took from it a
belt and holster, from which he removed a recent-model regulation
stunner. "This is as powerful a weapon as we have here so far, except
for the heavy stuff. I hope we never have to use any of that--clearing
it for use is a lot of red tape." He looked up and saw the cold
expression on Rynason's face. "Of course, I hope we don't have to use
the stunners, either," he said calmly.

Rynason turned without a word and went to the door. He stopped there for
a moment and watched Manning checking over the weapon. He was thinking
of the disintegrators he had seen on the steps of the Temple of Kor, and
of the shell of a body tumbling out of the shadows.

"I'll see you at 600," he said.

SEVEN

Rynason spent the next two hours in town, moving through the windy
streets and thinking about what Manning had said. He was right, in a
way: this was no more than a foothold for the Earthmen, a touchdown
point. It wasn't even a community yet; buildings were still going up,
prices varied widely not only between landings of spacers but also
according to who did the selling. A lot of the men here were trying some
mining out on the west Flat; their findings had so far been small but
they brought the only real income the planet had so far yielded. The
rest of the town was rising on its own weight: bars, rooming houses,
laundries, and diners--establishments which thrived only because there
were men here to patronize them. Several weeks before a few of the men
had tried killing and eating the small animals who darted through the
alleys, but too many of those men had died and the practice had been
quickly abandoned. And they had noticed that when those animals foraged
in the refuse heaps outside the town, they died too.

A few of the big corporations had sent out field men to look around, but
it was too soon for any industry to have established itself here; all
the planet offered so far was room to expand. Despite the wide expansion
of the Earthmen through the stars, a planet where conditions were at all
favorable for living was not to be overlooked; the continuing population
explosion, despite tight regulations on the inner worlds, had kept up
with the colonization of these worlds, and new room was constantly
needed.

But the planetfall on Hirlaj was still new. A handful of Earthmen had
come, but they had not yet brought their civilization with them. They
stood precariously on the Flat, waiting for more settlers to come in and
build with them. If there should be trouble before more men arrived....

At 600 Rynason walked out on the dirt-packed street to Manning's
quarters. He met Marc Stoworth and Jules Lessingham coming out the door.
They looked worried.

"What's wrong?" he said.

They didn't stop as they went by. "Ask the old man," said Stoworth,
going past with an uncharacteristically hurried step.

Rynason went on in through the open door. Manning was in the front room,
amid several crates of stunner-units. He looked up quickly as Rynason
entered and waved brusquely to him.

"Help me get this stuff unloaded, Lee."

Rynason fished for his sheath-knife and started cutting open one of the
crates. "Why are you unloading the arsenal?"

"Because we may need it. Couple of the boys were just out at the
horse-pasture, and they say the friendly natives have disappeared."

"Jules and Stoworth? I met them on the way in."

"They were doing some follow-up work out there ... or at least they were
going to. There's not a single one of them there, not a trace of them."

Rynason frowned. "They were all there this morning."

"They're not there now!" Manning snapped. "I don't like it, not after
what you've told me. We're going to look for them."

"With stunners?"

"Yes. Right now Mara is out at the field clearing several of the fliers
to use in scouting for them."

Rynason stacked the boxes of weapons and power-packs on the floor where
Manning indicated. There were about forty of them--blunt-barrelled guns
with thick casing around the powerpacks, weighing about ten pounds each.
They looked as statically blunt as anvils, but they could stun any
animal at two hundred yards; within a two-foot range, they could shake a
rock wall down.

"How many men are we taking with us?" Rynason asked, eying the stacks on
the floor.

Manning looked up at him briefly. "As many as we can get. I'm calling a
militia; Stoworth and Lessingham went into town to round up some men."

So he was going ahead with the power-grab; Malhomme had been right. No
danger had been proven yet, but that wouldn't stop Manning--nor the
drifters he'd been buying in the town. Killing was an everyday thing to
them.

"How many of the Hirlaji do you think we'll have to kill to make it look
important to the Council?" Rynason asked after a moment, his voice
deliberately inflectionless.

Manning looked up at him with a calculating eye. Rynason met his gaze
directly, daring the man to take offense. He didn't.

"All right, it's a break for me," Manning shrugged. "What did you
expect? There's precious little opportunity on this desert rock for
leadership in any sense that you might approve of." He paused. "I don't
know if it will be necessary to kill any of them. Take it easy and we'll
see."

Rynason's eyes were cold. "All right, we'll see. But just remember, I'll
be watching just as closely as you. If you start any violence that isn't
necessary...."

"What will you do, Lee?" said Manning. "Report me to the Council?
They'll listen to me before they'd pay attention to complaints from a
nobody who's been drifting around the outworlds for most of his life.
That's all you are, you know, Lee--a drifter, a bum, like the rest of
them. That's what everybody out here on the Edge is ... unless he does
something about it.

"I hold the reins right now. If I decide to do something that you don't
like, you won't be able to stop me ... neither you, nor your female
friend."

"So Mara's against you too?" Rynason said.

"She made a few remarks earlier," Manning said calmly. "She may regret
it soon enough."

Rynason looked at the man through narrowed eyes for a moment, then
strapped on a gunbelt and loaded one of the stunners. He snapped it into
the holster carefully, wondering just what Manning had meant by his last
remark. Was it a threat in any real sense, or was Manning just letting
off steam? Well, they'd see about that too ... and Rynason would be
watching.

* * * * *

Within half an hour close to sixty men had collected outside Manning's
door. They were dirty and unshaven; some of them were working in the
town, a few were miners, but most of them were drifters who had followed
the advance of the star frontier, who drank and brawled in the streets
of the town, sleeping by day and raising hell at night. They stole when
they could, killed when they wanted.

The drifters were men who had been all over the worlds of the Edge, who
had spent years watching the new planets opened for colonization and
exploitation, but had never got their own piece. They knew the feel of
these planetfall towns on the Edge, and could talk for hours about the
worlds they had seen. But they were city men, all of them; they had seen
the untamed worlds, but only from the streets. They hadn't taken part in
the exploring or the building, only in the initial touchdowns. When the
building was done, they signed on to the spacers again and drifted to
the next world, farther out.

Rynason looked at their faces from where he stood in the doorway,
listening to Manning talking to them. They were hard men, mean and
sometimes vicious. Nameless faces, all of them, having no place in the
more developed areas of the Terran civilization. And maybe that was
their own fault. But Rynason knew that they were running, not to
anything, but from the civilization itself. Running ... because when an
area was settled and started to become respectable, they began to see
what they did not have. The temporary quarters would come down, to be
replaced by permanent buildings that were meant to be lived in, not just
as places for sleeping. Closets, and shelters for landcars; quadsense
receivers and food integrators. They didn't want to see that ... because
they hated it, or because they wanted it? It didn't matter, Rynason
decided. They ran, and now they were here on the Edge with all their
anger and frustration, and Manning was ready to give them a way to let
it out.

At the side of the mob he saw a familiar grey shock of hair--Rene
Malhomme. Was he with them, then? Rynason craned his neck for a better
view, and for a moment the crowd parted enough to let him see Malhomme's
face. He was looking directly toward Rynason, holding a dully gleaming
knife flat against his thick chest ... and his lips were drawn back into
the crooked, sardonic smile which Rynason had seen many times. No,
Malhomme at least was not part of this mob.

"We already know which direction they went," Manning was saying.
"Lessingham will be in charge of the main body, and you'll follow him.
If he gives you an order, _take it_. This is a serious business; we
won't have room for bickering.

"Some of us will be scouting with the flyers. Well be in radio contact
with you. When we find out where they are we'll reconnoiter and make our
plans from there."

Manning paused, looking appraisingly at the faces before him. "Most of
you are armed already, I see. We have some extra stunners here; if you
need them, come on up. But remember, the men who carry the shockers will
be in front; and their business will be simply to down the horses--any
killing that's to be done will be left to those of you who have knives,
or anything lethal."

There was a rising wave of voices from the crowd. Some men came forward
for weapons; Rynason saw others drawing knives and hatchets, and a few
of them had heavy guns, projectile type. Rynason watched with narrowed
eyes; it had been a filthy maneuver on Manning's part to organize this
mob, and his open acceptance of their temper was dangerous. Once they
were turned loose, what could stop them?

There was a sudden shouting in the back of the mob; men surged and fell
away, cursing. Rynason heard scuffing back there, and sounds of bone
meeting flesh. The men at the front of the mob turned to look back, and
some tried to shove their way through to the fight.

A scream came from the midst of the crowd, and was answered by an
excited, angry swelling of voices around the fighting men. Suddenly
Manning was among them, smashing his way through with a stunner in his
hand, swinging it like a club.

"Get the hell out of the way!" he shouted, stepping quickly through the
men. They grumbled and fell back to let him by, but Rynason heard the
men still fighting in the rear, and then he saw them. There were three
of them, two men and what looked like a boy still in his teens. The boy
had red hair and a dark, ruddy complexion: he was new to the outworlds.
The two older men had the pallor of the Edge drifters, nurtured in the
artificial light of spacers and sealed survival quarters on the less
hospitable worlds.

The larger of the two men had a knife, a heavy blade of a type that was
common out here; many of the men used them as hatchets when necessary.
This one dripped with blood; the smaller man's left arm was torn open
just below the shoulder, and hanging uselessly. He stood swaying in the
dust, hurling a string of curses at the man with the knife, while the
boy stood slightly behind him, staring with both fear and hatred in his
eyes. He had a smaller knife, but he held it loosely and uncertainly at
his side.

Manning stepped between them. He had sized up the situation already, and
he paused now only long enough to bite out three short, clipped words
which told these men exactly what he thought of them. The man with the
knife stopped back and muttered something which Rynason didn't hear.

Manning raised the stunner coldly and let him have it. The blast caught
the man in the shoulder and spun him around, throwing him into the
crowd; several of them went down. The long knife fell to the ground,
where dirt mixed with the blood on it. There was silence.

Manning looked around him, swinging the stunner loosely in his hand.
After a moment he said calmly, but loud enough for all to hear, "We
won't have time for fighting among ourselves. The next man who starts
anything will be killed outright. Now get these men out of here." He
turned and strode back through the mob while the boy and a couple of the
other men took the wounded away.

Malhomme had moved further into the crowd. He was strangely silent;
usually he went among these men roughly and jovially, cursing them all
with goodnatured ease. But now he stood watching the men around him with
a frown creasing his heavily lined face. Malhomme was worried, and
Rynason, seeing that, felt his stomach tighten.

Manning faced the men from the front of the crowd. He stared at them
shrewdly, holding each man's gaze for a few seconds. Then he grinned,
and said, "Save it for the horses, boys. Save it for them."

* * * * *

Rynason rode out to the field with Manning, Stoworth, and a few of the
others. It was a short trip in the landcar, and none of them spoke much.
Even Stoworth rode silently, his usual easy flow of trivia forgotten.
Rynason was thinking about Manning: he had handled the outbreak quickly
and decisively enough, keeping the men in line, but it had been only a
temporary measure. They would be expecting some real action soon, and
Manning was already offering them the Hirlaji. If the alarm turned out
to be a false one, would he be as easily able to stop them then?

Or would he even try?

The flyers were ready when they got to the field, but Mara was gone. Les
Harcourt met them at the radio office on the edge of the field; he was
the communications man out here. He led them into the low,
quick-concrete construction office and shoved some forms at Manning to
be signed.

"If there's any trouble, you'll be responsible for it," he said to
Manning. "The men can look out for themselves, but the flyers are
Company property."

Manning scowled impatiently and bent to sign the papers.

"Where's Mara?" Rynason asked.

"She's already taken one of the flyers out," Harcourt said. "Left ten
minutes ago. We've got her screen in the next room." He waved a hand
toward the door in the rear of the room.

Rynason went on back and found the live set. The screen, monitored from
a camera on the flyer, showed the foothills of the southern mountains
over which Mara was flying. They were bare and blunt; the rock
outcroppings which thrust up from the Flat had been weathered smooth in
the passage of years. Mara was passing over a low range and on to the
desert beyond.

Rynason picked up the mike. "Mara, this is Lee; we just got here. Have
you found them yet?"

Her voice came thinly over the speaker. "Not yet. I thought I saw some
movement in one of the passes, but the light wasn't too good. I'm
looking for that pass again."

"All right. We'll be going up ourselves in a few minutes; if you find
them, be careful. Wait for us."

He refitted the mike in its stand and rose. But as he turned to the door
her voice came again: "There they are!"

He looked at the screen, but for the moment he couldn't see anything.
Mara's flyer was coming down out of the rocky hills now, the Flat
stretching before her on the screen. Rynason could see the pass through
which she had been flying, but there was no movement there; it took him
several seconds to see the low ruins off to the right, and the figures
moving through them.

The screen banked and turned toward them; she was lowering her altitude.

"I see them," he said into the mike. "Can't make out what they're doing,
on the screen. Can you see them any more clearly?"

"They're entering one of the buildings down there," she said after a
moment. "I've counted almost twenty of them so far; they must all be
here."

"Can you go down and see what they're doing? The sooner we find out, the
better: Manning's got a pretty ugly bunch of so-called vigilantes on the
way out there."

She didn't reply, but on the screen he saw the crumbling buildings grow
larger and nearer. He could make out individual structures now: a wall
had fallen and was half-buried in the dust and sand; an entire roof had
caved in on another building, leaving only rubble in the interior. It
was difficult to tell sometimes when the original lines of the buildings
had fallen: they had all been smoothed by the wind-blown sand, so that
broken pillars looked almost as though they had been built that way,
smooth and upright, solitary.

At last, he saw the Hirlaji. They were slowly mounting the steps of one
of the largest of the buildings and passing into the shadows of the
interior. This building was not as deteriorated as most of the others;
as Mara's flyer dipped low over it Rynason could see its characteristic
lines unbroken and clear.

With a start, he sat up and said hurriedly, "Mara, take another close
pass over that building, the one they're entering."

In a moment she came in again over the smooth stone structure, and
Rynason looked closely at the screen. There was no mistaking it now: the
high steep steps leading up to a colonnade which almost circled the
building, the large carvings over the main entrance.

"You'd better set down away from them!" he said. "That's the Temple of
Kor!" But even as he finished speaking the image on the screen jolted
and rocked, and the flyer dipped even closer toward the jumbled ruins
below.

"They're firing something!"

He saw that she was trying to gain altitude, but something was wrong;
the buildings on the screen dipped and wavered, up and down, spinning.

"Mara! Pull up--get out of there!"

"One of the wings is damaged," she said quickly, and suddenly there was
another jolt on the screen and he heard her gasp. The picture spun and
righted itself, seemed to hang motionless for a moment, and then the
stone wall of one of the buildings was directly ahead and growing
larger.

"Mara!"

The image spun wildly, the building filled the screen, and then it went
black; he heard a crash from the speaker, cut off almost before it had
sounded. The room was silent.

EIGHT

Rynason stared at the dead screen for only a moment; he wheeled and ran
back to the outer room.

"Let's get those flyers up! Mara's found them, but they've brought her
down." He was already going out the door as he spoke.

Manning and the others were right behind him as he dashed out onto the
field. Rynason headed for the nearest flyer, a small runabout which had
been discarded as obsolete on the inner worlds and consigned to use out
here on the Edge, where equipment was scarce. He leaped through the port
and was shutting the door when Manning caught it.

"Where are they? What's happened to the woman?"

"They were shooting something!" Rynason snapped. The knife-scar over his
right eye stood out sharply in his anger. "She crashed--may be badly
hurt. She didn't have too much altitude, though. The hell with where she
is--_follow_ me!"

He slammed the door and squeezed into the flying seat. While he warmed
the engines he saw the others scattering across the field to the other
flyers. In a moment the hum of the radioset told him that their
communications were open. He saw the props of the other flyers starting
to turn, and flicked on his mike.

"They're on the other side of the south range," he said quickly. "She
didn't give me cooerdinates, but I should be able to find the spot. When
we get there, we land away from the city and go in on foot."

Manning's voice came coldly through the radioset: "Are you giving orders
now, Lee?"

"Right now I am, yes! If you want to try going in before reconnoitering,
that's your funeral. They have weapons."

"When we touch ground again I'll take over," Manning said. "Now let's
get going--Lee, you're first."

But Rynason was already starting his run across the field. When he had
some speed he kicked in the rocket booster and fought the little flyer
skyward. When he had caught the air he banked southward and fed the
motors all he had. He didn't look around for the others; he was setting
his own pace.

The mountain range was ten miles to the south; they should be able to
make it in five or six minutes, he figured. Below him on the dry Flat he
saw the pale shadow of his flyer skimming across the dust. The drone of
the motors filled the compartment.

The radio cut in again. It was Manning. "What's this about a city, Lee?
Is that where they are?"

"The City of the Temple," Rynason said. "It's down among overhanging
rocks--no wonder we hadn't seen it before. Doesn't seem to have been
used for centuries or more. But that's where the Temple of Kor is--and
the Hirlaji are all in the Temple."

Static hissed at him for a moment. "How did they bring her down?"
someone asked. It sounded like Stoworth.

"Probably the disintegrators," Rynason said. "The Hirlaji don't have
many of them, but they've got enough power to give us a lot of trouble."

"And they're using them, eh?" Manning said. "What do you think of your
horses now, Lee?"

Rynason didn't answer.

In a few minutes they were over the range. Rynason had to scout for
awhile before he found the pass he had seen on Mara's screen, but once
he saw it below him he followed it out to the other side. The city was
there, lying darkly amid the shadows of the mountains. Rynason banked
off and set down half a mile away.

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