Terry Gene Carr - Warlord of Kor

T >> Terry Gene Carr >> Warlord of Kor

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He waited for the others to land before he left the flyer. He took a
pair of binocs from the supply kit and trained them on the city across
the Flat, but he couldn't find Mara's fallen flyer.

When they were all down he clambered out of the compartment and alighted
heavily in the dust. Manning strode quickly to him, wearing twin
stunners. He took one from its holster and fingered it thoughtfully as
he spoke.

"The main party was back in the pass. They should be here inside half an
hour. We'll storm the temple immediately--we've got them outnumbered."

Rynason made a dubious sound deep in his throat, looking out at the
city. He was remembering that he had seen it before from this Flat ...
and had stormed it before. The defensive walls were high.

"They can fire down on us from the walls," he said in a low voice.
"There's no cover out there--they'd wipe half of us out before we could
get in."

"We can come around from the pass," Manning said. "There's plenty of
cover from that direction."

"And more fortification, too!" Rynason snapped. "Just remember, Manning,
that city was built as a fortress. We'd _have_ to come from the Flat."

Manning paused, frowning. "We've got to take them anyway," he said
slowly. "Damn it, we can't just stand here and wait for them to come out
at us. What are they doing, anyway?"

Rynason regarded the older man for several moments, almost amused.
"Right now," he said, "they're probably having a conference--with the
Outsiders. That's where the machine is, remember."

"Then the sooner we attack, the better," Manning said. "Marc, get the
main party on the hand-radio--tell them to get here as fast as they
can." He turned for a moment to look out across the Flat at the city.
"And you can promise them some action," he said.

Stoworth dropped the radio from his shoulder and threw back the cover.
He switched on the power, and static sounded in the dry air. He lifted
the mike ... and a voice cut through the static.

"Is anyone picking this up? Is anyone there?"

It was Mara's voice.

Rynason knelt beside the set and took the mike from Stoworth's hand.
"This is Lee. Are you hurt?"

"Lee?"

"I hear you. Are you hurt?"

"Not badly. Lee, what are you doing? I saw the flyers land."

"Manning wants to attack the city as soon as the land party gets here.
What's going on there?"

"I'm ... in the temple. I've been trying to communicate with them. I've
got an interpreter, but they don't listen to what I say. Lee, this is
incredible here! They've brought out a lot of weapons ... some of them
don't work. The hall is half-filled with dust and sand, and they move so
clumsily! They're trying to hurry, because they saw you too, but it's
like ... like they've forgotten how. They think they can get rid of us
all, but they.... It's pitiful--they're so slow."

"Those disintegrators aren't slow," Rynason said. Manning was standing
beside him; he dropped a hand on his shoulder, but Rynason shook it off.
"Are they using the machine ... the altar?"

"They were using it when they brought me in. I think it _is_ the
Outsiders. But they don't seem to know it's just a machine--they kneel
in front of it, and chant. It's so strange, in that language of theirs
... those thin, high voices, and the echoes...."

"They're holding you prisoner?"

"Yes. I think they want to hold you off till they can get ready for
their own attack."

"_For their what?_" Rynason stood up, and looked toward the city; he
could see no movement there.

"I know ... it's incredible. Lee, they don't know what they're doing.
Horng said on the interpreter that they were going to drive us off the
planet, and then rebuild their cities, and re-arm. It's something to do
with Kor, or the Outsiders. The orders have changed. They think that if
they can drive us away for awhile they can build themselves up to where
they can repel any further touchdowns here."

"This order came from the machine?"

"Yes. There was a mistake, and Horng realized it after you linked with
him this morning. The Outsiders, or Kor or whatever it is, had
overestimated us."

"Maybe then, but not now. They're committing suicide!" Rynason said.

"I know, and I tried to tell them that. But the machine says
differently. Lee, do you think that's really the Outsiders?"

"If it is," he said slowly, "they wouldn't send the Hirlaji against us
without some help." He thought a minute, while the wind of the Flat blew
sand against his leg and static came from the radio. "They could be
making another mistake!" Mara said. "I'm sure what they told the
Outsiders wasn't true--they think they're as strong as they were before.
But their eyes ... their eyes are afraid. I know it."

"Do they know what you're saying to me?"

"No. Lee, I'm not even sure they know what a radio is. Maybe they think
I carry my portable altar with me." Her voice had taken on a frantic
note. "It's a ... a simple case of freedom of religion, Lee! Freedom of
religion!"

"Mara! Calm down! Calm down!" He waited for a few seconds, until her
voice came again, more quietly:

"I'm sorry ... it's just that they're so...."

"Forget it. Sit tight there. I think I know how to slip in--alone." He
switched off.

He stood up and shrugged his shoulders heavily, loosening his tensed
muscles. Then he turned purposefully to Manning.

"The rest of the party won't be here for awhile yet, so you can't
possibly go in now. I'm going to try to get Mara out before any fighting
starts."

"What if they capture you too?" Manning said. "I can't hold off an
attack too long--you could be right about the Outsiders helping them.
The sooner we finish them off, the better."

Rynason looked coldly at him. "You heard what Mara said. We won't have
any trouble taking them. You can't attack them while she's in there,
though. Or can you?"

"Lee. I've told you--I can't take chances. If the Outsiders are in this,
it's a dangerous business. You can go in if you want, but we're not
waiting more than half an hour for you to get out."

Rynason met his gaze steadily for a moment, then nodded brusquely. "All
right." He turned and moved into the over-hanging shadows of the
mountains, toward the ancient, alien city.

* * * * *

He stayed in the shadows as he approached the walls of the fortress,
darting quickly across exposed ground. The Hirlaji were large and
powerful, physical battle with them was of course out of the question.
But he had some things on his side: he was small, and therefore less
likely to be seen; he was faster than the quiet, aged aliens. And he
knew the city, the fortress and the temple, almost as well as they did.

Perhaps better, in fact, for his purposes. For while he had shared
Tebron's mind he had been ... not only Tebron, but also Rynason,
Earthman. A corner of his mind had been alert and aware ... hearing the
distant screams of Horng, wondering about the design of the Altar of
Kor. And he had seen other things when he looked through Tebron's eyes:
when the ancient warlord had stormed the city-fortress, there had been
an observer in him who had said: An Earthman could go in this way,
unobserved. A smaller attacker could slip through _here_, could conceal
himself where no Hirlaji could reach.

He arrived, at last, at the base of the wall where the blunt rocks of
the mountains tumbled to a dead-end against flat, weathered stone. So
far he must not have been seen; there had been no disintegrator beams
fired at him, no leathery Hirlaji heads watching from the walls. He
flattened against the stone and raised his eyes to the barriers.

The wall here had been built higher than the portions which faced the
Flat, and it was stronger. No one had tried to storm the city from this
position, because it was too well protected. But the walls had been
built against the heavy, clumsy bodies of the grey aliens; with luck, a
man could scale this wall. The footholds in the weathered stones would
be precarious, but perhaps it could be done. And the Hirlaji, who
regarded this wall as impregnable, would not be guarding it.

Sighting upward from flat against the wall, he chose his path quickly,
and began to climb. The stone was smooth but grainy; he dug his fingers
into narrow niches and pulled himself slowly upward, bracing himself
with footholds whenever he could. It was laborious, painful work; twice
he lost handholds and hung precariously until his straining fingers
again found some indentation. Sweat covered him; the wind from the Flat
whipped around the wall and touched the moisture on his back coldly. But
his face was set in a frozen grimness and though his breath came in
gasps he made no other sound.

When he had neared the top he suddenly seemed to reach a dead-end; the
stones were smooth above him. His arms ached, his shoulders seemed
deadened; he clung numbly to the wall and searched for another path.
When he found it, he had to descend ten feet and move to the right
before he could re-ascend; as he retraced his route down the wall he
noticed blood where his torn fingers had left their mark. But he could
not feel the pain in his fingers.

At last, when the wall had come to seem a separate world of existence
which was all that he would ever know, a vertical plane to which he
clung with dim determination, hardly knowing why any longer ... at last,
he reached the top. His groping hand reached up and found the edge of
the wall; his fingers grasped it gratefully and he pulled himself up to
hang by both hands and survey the interior of the fortress.

A deserted floor stretched before him, shadowed by the late-afternoon
darkness which crept down from the mountains to rest on the aged remains
of the city. Forty feet down the walkway he saw stairs descending, but
his head swam and all he could focus on clearly was the light film of
dust and sand which covered even this topmost level of the city, blown
in shallow drifts against the walls which rose a few feet above the
floor here. There were no footprints in that dust; no one had walked
here for thousands of years.

Wearily, he pulled himself over the last barrier and fell numbly to the
floor, where he lay for long minutes fighting for breath. His lungs were
raw; the thin air of the planet caught and rasped in his throat. His
hands were torn and bleeding, and the knife-scar over his right eye had
begun to throb, but he ignored the pain. He had to clear his head....

Eventually he was able to stand, swaying beneath the dark sky. Below him
he saw the city, broken and dim, empty streets winding between fallen
walls and pillars. Mara's flyer lay shattered against one of those
broken walls; seeing it, he wondered how badly she had been hurt.

He moved toward the stairs, and descended them slowly. The stairs of the
city were as he had remembered them from Tebron's memories, and yet not
the same. To the Earthman they were steep: the steps were like separate
levels, three feet across and almost four feet deep. His legs ached at
each step as the shock of his weight fell on them.

He reached the bottom level and paused in the doorway onto the street.
It was empty, but he had to think a moment before he could remember his
bearings. Yes, the Temple was that way, somewhere down the dusty street.
He moved through the deeper shadows at the base of the buildings,
remembering.

Tebron had taken this city at the head of a force of warriors. To him it
had been large and majestic, a place of power and knowledge. But
Rynason, moving wearily through the dust of the ages which had fallen
upon the city since the ancient king, found it not merely large, but
huge; not majestic, but futile. And the power and knowledge which it
once had held was but a dusty shadow now. Somewhere ahead, in the
Temple, the survivors of that ages-old culture were trying to bring the
city to life again. With or without the Outsiders, he felt, they must
fail. They really wanted to bring themselves back to life, to reawaken
their minds, their dreams, their own power. But they tried to do it with
memories, and that was not the way.

No one was guarding the Temple. Rynason went up the steps as quickly as
he could, vaulting from level to level, trying to stay in the shadows,
listening for movement. But sounds did not carry far in the air of
Hirlaj; the aliens would not hear him approaching, but he might not hear
any of them either until he stumbled upon them.

At the top of the stairs he darted into the shadows of the colonnade
which surrounded the interior. Doorways opened at intervals of fifty
feet around the building; he would have to circle to the side and enter
there if at all. He slipped quickly between the columns and paused at
the third doorway. He dropped to the floor, lay flat on his chest and
looked inside.

They were all there--two dozen heavy grey aliens, sitting, standing,
staring quietly at the floor. There was little movement among them, but
nevertheless he could feel the excitement which pervaded the Temple. No,
not excitement--anxiety. Fear. Watching those huge bodies huddling into
themselves, he heard an echo of Horng's screams in his mind. These
creatures were afraid of battle, of conflict, and yet they had thrust
themselves into a fight which they must lose. Did they know that? Could
they believe what the machine of the Outsiders told them, after it had
been proven fallible?

The Eye of Kor glowed dully in the dark inner room; two of the Hirlaji
stood silently before it, watching, waiting. But the religion of Kor had
played no part in the lives of the Hirlaji for generations. Now that the
ancient, muddled religion had been brought to life again, could it have
the same hold on them that it had once had?

Mara was on the floor of the Temple, leaning with her back against the
wall. One of the doorways from the outer colonnade was nearby, but five
of the Hirlaji surrounded her. And with a start Rynason noticed that her
left arm hung limp and twisted at her side, and blood showed on her
forehead. Her face showed no emotion, but as he watched she raised her
right hand to run fingers through her long dark hair, nervously.

She had not seen him, but she was waiting. When he made his move she
would follow him. Rynason slipped back from the doorway and circled the
building again until he had reached the entrance nearest the girl. He
drew out his stunner from its holster and looked at it for a moment. He
would have to be fast; his weapon would give him no advantage against
the disintegrators of the Hirlaji, but surprise and speed might. And,
perhaps ... fear.

He broke around the corner of the doorway at a dead run, firing as he
went. Two of the Hirlaji fell before they could even turn; they crumpled
to the floor heavily. Then he screamed--a high scream, like Horng's, and
as loud as he could make it, a wail, a cry of anguish and terror and
pain. They felt it, and it touched a response in them; the Hirlaji who
surrounded Mara twisted to look at him, but they instinctively shrank
away. He continued to fire, bringing down three more of them while the
confusion lasted. He broke through to Mara, who was already on her feet;
without breaking his stride he grasped her by her good shoulder and
pulled her along with him as he ran through.

But some of the Hirlaji recovered in time to block their escape. Rynason
wheeled, looking frantically around the room for an unguarded exit. None
of those within reach were clear. He fired again, and ran for the altar.

One of the Hirlaji had raised a disintegrator; Rynason caught him with
the stunner as he fired, and the beam of the alien's weapon shot past
his leg, digging a pit into the floor beyond him. Other weapons were
raised now; they had only seconds left.

But they had reached the altar; the two Hirlaji there moved to block
them, but they were unarmed and Rynason dropped them with the stunner.
He pushed Mara past them and around to the side of the altar, seeking
cover from the disintegrators.

Behind the altar, there was a space just large enough for them to
squeeze through. Rynason's heart leaped; he pointed quickly to it and
turned to fire again as Mara pushed her way into the narrow aperture. A
disintegrator beam hissed over his head; another tore into the wall two
feet away from him. The Hirlaji were trying to keep their fire away from
the altar itself.

Rynason turned and squeezed behind the altar as soon as Mara was clear.
It was tight, but he made it, and once through the narrow opening they
found more room in the darkness. They could hear noise outside as the
Hirlaji moved toward the altar, but it sounded far away and dim. Mara
moved back into the darkness, and he followed.

They moved perhaps twenty feet into the wall behind the altar before
they were brought to a halt. The passage ended. Well, no matter; if it
was not an escape route, at least it would afford cover from the weapons
of the Hirlaji. Rynason dropped to the floor and rested.

Mara sat beside him. "Lee, you shouldn't have tried it," she said
anxiously. "Now we're trapped." He felt her hand touch his face in the
darkness.

"Maybe," he said. "But we may be able to catch them off their guard
again, and if so we may be able to get out."

She was silent. He felt her lean against his shoulder wearily, her hair
soft against his neck. Then he remembered that she had been hurt.

"What happened to your arm? And you were bleeding."

"I think it's broken. The bleeding was nothing, though: you should see
yourself. You were so tattered and bloody when you came in that I hardly
knew you. Knights should come in more properly shining armor."

He grinned wearily. "Wait till next time."

"Lee, where are we?" she said abruptly. Their eyes were becoming
adjusted to the darkness, and they could see rising around them a
complexity of machine relays, connectives, and pieces which did not seem
to make sense.

Rynason looked more closely at the complex. It was definitely Outsiders
work, but what was it? Part of the Altar of Kor, obviously, but the
Outsiders telecommunicators had never used such extensive machinery. Yet
it did look familiar. He tried to remember the different types of
Outsiders machinery which had been found and partially reconstructed by
the advancing Earthmen in the centuries past. There weren't many....

Then, suddenly, he had it, and it was so simple that he was surprised he
hadn't thought of it before.

"This is Kor," he said. "It's not a communicator--it's a computer. An
Outsiders computer."

NINE

Mara's frown deepened; she looked around them in the dimness, her eyes
taking in the complexity and extent of the circuitry. It faded into the
darkness behind them; lines ran into the walls and floor.

"They built their computers in the grand manner, didn't they?" she said
softly.

"I've seen fragments of them before," Rynason said. "This is a big
one--no telling how much area the total complex takes up. One thing's
certain, though: it's no ordinary computer of theirs. Not for plain
math-work, nor even for specialized computations, like the one on Rigel
II--that was apparently used for astrogation, but it wasn't half the
size of this. And navigation between stars, even with the kind of drive
they must have had, is no simple problem."

"The Hirlaji think it's a god," she said.

"That raised another problem," Rynason mused. "The Outsiders built it,
and must have left it here when they pulled back to wherever they were
going ... if they ever left the planet. But the Hirlaji use it, and they
communicate with it verbally. The Hirlaji are apparently responsible for
keeping it protected since then. But why should the Hirlaji be able to
use it?"

"Unless they're the Outsiders after all?" said Mara.

Rynason frowned. "No, I'm still not convinced of that. The clue seems to
be that they communicate verbally with it--they must have been using it
since before they developed telepathy."

"Couldn't there have been direct contact between the Hirlaji and the
Outsiders back when the Hirlaji were just evolving out of the beast
stage?"

"There must have been," said Rynason. "The Temple rituals are conducted
in an even older form of their language than most remembered--a
proto-language that was kept alive only by the priest caste, because the
machine had been set to respond to that language."

"But aren't primitive languages usually composed of simple, basic words
and concepts? How well could they communicate in such a language?"

"Not very well," Rynason said. "Which would explain why the machine
seemed to make mistakes--clumsiness of language. So the Outsiders,
maybe, left the machine when they pulled out, but they set it to respond
to the Hirlaji language because our horsefaced friends were beginning to
build a civilization of their own and the Outsiders thought they'd leave
them some guidance...." He stopped for a moment, remembering that first
linkage with Horng, and Tebron's memories. "The Hirlaji called them the
Old Ones," he said.

"And that order to Tebron ... about the other race that they would meet
someday. That was based on Outsiders observations."

"I wonder when the Outsiders were on Earth," Rynason said. "Sometime
after we'd started our own rise, certainly. Maybe in ancient
Mesopotamia, or India. Or later, during the Renaissance?"

"The time doesn't matter, does it?" Mara said. "They touched down on
Earth, took note of us, and left. Somehow they thought we were going to
develop more rapidly than we did."

"Probably before the Dark Ages," Rynason said. "Maybe they didn't see
that thousand-year setback coming...." He stopped, and stood up in the
low passageway among the ancient circuitry. "So here we are,
second-guessing the Outsiders. And outside, their proteges have
disintegrators probably left by the Outsiders, and they're just waiting
for us to try to get out."

"Our new-found knowledge isn't doing us much good, is it?" she said.

He shook his head slowly. "When I was still on the secondary senseteach
units I met Rene Malhomme for the first time. My father worked the
spacers, so I don't even remember what planet this was on. But I
remember the night I first saw Rene--he was speaking from the top of a
blue-lumber pile, shouting about the corporations that were moving in.
He was getting all worked up about something, and several people in the
crowd were shouting back at him; I stopped to watch. All of a sudden six
or seven men moved in from somewhere and dragged him down from where he
was standing. There was a fight--people were thrown all around. I hid
till it was over.

"When the crowd finally cleared, there was Rene. His clothes were torn,
but he wasn't hurt. Every one of the men who had attacked him had to be
carried away; I think one of them was dead. Rene stood there laughing;
then he saw me hidden in the darkness and he took me home. He told me
that when he'd been younger he'd worked his way all the way in to Earth,
and studied some of the cultures there. He'd learned karate, which was
an ancient Japanese way of fighting."

Rynason took a deep breath. "He said everything a person learns will be
useful someday. And I believed him."

"A nice parable," Mara said. "We could use him against the Hirlaji,
though."

Rynason was silent, thinking. If they could only catch the aliens off
guard ... but of course they couldn't, now. He let his eyes wander
aimlessly along the circuitry surrounding them. Tell me, old Kor, what
do we do now?

After a moment his eyes narrowed; he reached up and traced a connection
with his fingers, back to the front, toward the altar. It led directly
to ... the speaker!

The voice of Kor.

And if he could interrupt that connection, put his own voice through the
speaker, out through the altar....

"Mara, we're going out. I've found my own brand of karate for our
friends out there."

He helped her to her feet. She moved somewhat painfully, her broken left
arm hanging stiffly at her side, but she made no protest.

"We've got to be fast," he said. "I don't know how well this will
work--it depends on how much they trust their clay-footed god today."
Quickly, he outlined his plan. Mara listened silently and nodded.

Then he set to work. It was largely guesswork, following those intricate
alien connections, but Rynason had seen this part of such machines
before. He found the penultimate point at which the impulses from the
brain were translated into sound and broadcast through the speaker. He
disconnected this, his torn fingers working awkwardly on the delicate
linkages.

"Ready?"

Mara was just inside the narrow passage behind the altar. She nodded
quickly.

Rynason twisted himself so that he could speak directly into the input
of the speaker. He raised his voice to approximate the thin, high sounds
of the Hirlaji language.

_Remain motionless. Remain motionless. Remain motionless._

The command burst out upon the altar room of the Temple, shattering the
silence. The Hirlaji turned in surprise to the altar--and stood still.

_Remain motionless. Remain motionless._

It was the phrase he had heard the machine use so often to Tebron, king
priest leader of all Hirlaj. It had meant something else then, but the
proto-language of the Hirlaji had no precise meanings; given by itself,
it seemed to mean precisely what it said.

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