The 53rd Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK; Geoff St. Reynard

by Geoff St. Reynard

“We are besieged by the gods. We dare not leave this place.”

  “By the gods. Hmm. Let’s sit down, boy. I want to know all about things here. Miss, after you.” He waited till Nirea had squatted on the floor, then folded himself down. “Okay,” he said, whatever that meant. “Shoot. Begin. What are the gods, first?”

  Lady Nirea listened with half an ear to Revel’s speeches, but with all her intellect she tried to follow John’s remarks. They were sometimes fragmentary, sometimes short explanations of things that puzzled Revel, and sometimes merely grunts and slappings of his thighs. Many words she did not know....

  * * * *

  My God, that sounds like extraterrestrial beings ... globes, golden aura of energy or force, sure, that’s possible; and tentacles ... zanphs? describe ‘em ... they aren’t from Earth either; I’ll bet you these god-globes of yours, which must be Martian or Venusian or Lord-knows-what, brought along those pretty pets when they hit for Earth....

  Listen, Mink, those are not gods! They’re things from the stars, from out there beyond the world! You understand that? They came here in those “buttons” of yours—what we used to call flying saucers—and took over after ... after whatever happened. Your civilization must have been in a hell of a decline to accept ‘em as gods, because in my day ... oh, well, go ahead.

  Priests, sure, there’d be a class of sycophants, bastards who’d sell out to the extraterrestrials for glory and profit ... yeah, your gentry sound like another type of sell-out, traitors to their race and their world ... describe those squires’ costumes again, will you?... Holy cats, eighteenth century to a T! Not a thread changed, from the sound of it! And a lower class, you call it the ruck, which is downtrodden and lives in what might as well be hell....

  Yep, it sure sounds like hell and ashes. The globes; then, as is natural to a conquered country, the top dogs, priests in your case, who run things but are run by the globes; then the privileged gentry—I’ll have a look at those books of yours in a minute, honey—who pay some kind of tax, in money or sweat or produce or something, for being what they are; then the ruck (I know the word, son, you’ve just enlarged its meaning) who have been serfs and peasants and vassals and thralls and churls and hoi polloi and slaves since the Egyptians crawled out of the Nile. The great unwashed, the people. Let ‘em eat cake. I’m sorry, Mink, go on.

  Your gentry sound about as lousy a pack of hellions as the eighteenth century squires! Too bad you don’t know about tobacco, they could carry snuffboxes and really act the part....

  My God! Even the fox hunts—with people hunted. Anyone but miners? Open days, eh? Ho-oly....

  Glad to know you, Rack. Don’t know as I’d care to have you on the other side, you look like Goliath. So you just saw the light when the gods started to die? You are lucky you saw it, big man; brother against brother is the nastiest form of war, especially if mankind’s fighting an alien power....

  Your rebels sound familiar, Mink. They had ‘em about like you in Ireland, a hundred or so years ago—I mean before I went bye-bye.... Always romantic, unbelievable, unfindable, foxes with fangs....

  I wonder what your globes wanted? Power, sure, if they’re that humanoid in concept, but it must have been more. Maybe their own planet blew up. Maybe they ran out of something. Tell me, do you have to give them anything? Any metal, say?

  Diamonds? Are those small hard chunks of—yes, I guess diamond still means what it did. By gravy, I’ll bet I know! They were just starting to discover the terrific potential of energy of the diamond when I went to sleep in 2084. I wonder how long ago that was? Anyway, I’ll wager these globes of yours run their damned saucers—buttons—on diamond energy. Maybe their planet ran out of diamonds. By god! what a yarn!

  You’ll have your hands full, but maybe I can help. There’s a way to bring those saucers down out of the sky in a hurry.... They won’t give up easily. They obviously have atomic bombs, and the lush intoxication of power won’t be a cinch to give up, not for anything that sounds as egotistic as the globes....

  Dolfya? We called it Philadelphia. Kamden, Camden, yeah.... Woods lions, wow! They must be mutants from zoo or circus lions that escaped during the atom wars; or maybe someone brought ‘em to the U.S. The Tartarians had tame lions, I remember.

  Six or eight brains? Well, Mink, I wouldn’t argue, but I think you are confusing certain functions of one brain with—oh, do go on!

  Let me see that gun. My Lord, what a concoction! Blunderbuss muzzle, shells, yet no breech-loading; ramrods to shove in shells! My sainted aunt! A fantastic combination....

  He eats dandelions, parsley, grass, eh ... chlorophyll, obviously. And the globe rests on his chest and puts tentacles into his mouth and nostrils. It’s feeding, sure; look at the title of this book you’ve got here. This is a bastard English but close enough. Certainly your father wrote it, Miss. Some of your gentry must have preserved the art as a secret.

  Look here: I’ll make it as plain as I can. The globes are from another world. They came here for diamonds to run their buttons with. Got that?

  Now here’s what I deduce from the little I’ve read here. Talk about Pepy’s Diary! Hadn’t anything on this chronicle. Your father and the other gentry have to feed the globes periodically. Evidently they draw nourishment out of the human bodies—all that chlorophyll makes me think it’s a definitely physical nourishment, rather than a psychic one. That’s what your people pay for being privileged powers in the land. They stand the disgrace and the pain, if there is any, the draining of their energies, in return for plain old magnetic power.

  So that’s the source of life, strength, what-have-you, of the aliens! They must have gotten pretty frantic out in the space wastes, looking for a planet that could afford them a life form that was tap-able.

  Evidently it has to be voluntary, from these books. I guess the ancestors of the ruck had their crack at the honor and declined, thus dooming themselves and their offspring to servitude; while those that assented became the gentry. What a—Judas Priest! What a sordid state of affairs for poor old Earth!

  Let me have that line from the Globate Credo again: They came from the sky before our grandfathers were born, to a world torn by war; they settled our differences and raised us from the slime—there’s a bitter laugh, gentlemen—giving us freedom. All we have we owe to the globes. There’s the whole tale in a nutshell. God!

  Orbish language, Orbuary, Orbsday—nice job they did of infiltrating. I wonder what books they left you. I’d like a look at your father’s library. Alice in Wonderland, I suppose, or Black Beauty, or something equally advanced.

  Now listen, lads, and you, Lady Nirea. I came from a world that may have had its rugged spots, but it was heaven and Utopia compared with this one. You disinterred me at the damndest most vital moment of your history, and probably of Earth’s as well—we’ve had conquerors aplenty, but always of this world, not from out of it. It seems to me that if your rebellion fails, you’re due for worse treatment than ever. You’ve got to win, and win fast. Any entity that has atomic weapons is going to be no easy mark, and the gentry have guns. How about you people? Ten? Ten guns altogether? Oohh....

  See here. That big machine over there is a—well, that’s hopeless. I’ll try to break this down in one-syllable words. Orbish words, I hope.

  That big thing sends up rays like beams of sunlight but of different intensity, color, wave length, et cetera—it sends up beams that counteract, I mean work against, destroy, other beams. Now the buttons are held up there by forces in diamonds, taken out by these globes of yours and used to hold up their homes, ships, saucers, buttons. The beams from that big thing will destroy the diamond beams and make the buttons fall.

  There’s just one thing. We have to get the machine, the thing, out of this cave and onto the surface of the earth. You catch my meaning? It has to have sky above it before it can work against the button-beams. Yes, much like your globes’ telepathy (what a word to survive, when “glass” and “electricity” didn’t) and hypnosis fai
ls when rock gets in the way.

  Can you get it to the surface? Talk it over, Mink. It can give you plenty of help ... if you can get it up there. I’ll just sit here, if it’s okay with you, and let my imagination boggle at what you’ve told me.

  I have the most confounded urgent feeling that this is a visit I’m making in a time machine, and that tomorrow I’ll go back to good old 2084. Johnnie, Johnnie, wake up! You’re here!

  God!

  CHAPTER XIII

  The Mink he takes his pick and gun,

  He ranges through the towns;

  His force is miners, trappers, thieves—

  And a girl in gentry-gown.

  The rebels ride on stolen nags,

  They travel on shanks’ mare;

  The gore’s awash, the heads they roll,

  All in the torches’ glare.

  —Ruck’s Ballad of the Mink

  * * * *

  Revel the Mink and his eight troops crouched in the dark entrance of the mine. The night was black, clouds had obscured the moon, and only the occasional pinpoints of globes drifting between the buttons above them broke the gloom.

  “What are they doing?” hissed Nirea. “Why haven’t we been attacked long since?”

  “The globes move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform,” muttered John Klapham. “I’ll wager there’s something like that in the Globate Credo.”

  “Almost those words.” Revel glanced at him respectfully. This man of the Ancient Kingdom had great mental powers.

  “Sure. Every time somebody has the upper hand over somebody else, there’s got to be an aura of mystery; and any half-brained action is put down to ‘mysterious ways.’” He spat. “They’re so damn confused, son, that they’re probably holding forty conferences up there, because they don’t dare wipe out this valley—coal keeps the gentry warm and happy for ‘em—and they want to inspect the cave down below. So they’re tryin’ to think of the best way to squelch you without losing too many priests and zanphs and gentry.”

  “True, they mustn’t lose too many servants, or their prestige is hurt,” said Lady Nirea. Now that she’d found her Revel, she had discarded the rucker’s clothing and was dressed in a thigh-hugging sapphire gown. Even in the dark she was beautiful, he thought.

  The Mink stood. Up and down the valley glowed the lights of god-guards at the mines, double and treble now, since with the Mink loose not even a god was safe alone. Plenty of zanphs there too, he thought. Yet he had a few gentryman’s guns, and his old pick slung at his back. Zanphs, gods, gentry, priests? Let them beware!

  His thinking was done; he would retire his brains—despite the clever John, Revel knew he had more than one brain—and let his brawn take over. Only the brawn of the Mink could win through the next hours. Half-consciously he tensed his whole frame, curled his fingers and toes, thrust out his great chest. The skin on all parts of his body creaked, split back from the worse wounds, achily stretched; blood sprang from shoulder and from other hurt places. Yet he was not only whole, but full of eager vitality. The small pains of his hide were only incentives to act violently and forget them. He relaxed and turned to his friends.

  “You two, find the nags of the gentry we slew. I hear stamping nearby. Nirea, go to your own beast and wait for me. You two, with Rack, Jerran, John and me, we’ll search the mines for men. We need plenty of them—it’s miners’ guts and muscles it’ll take to move that beam-throwing thing from the cavern. Let’s begin.”

  He drew the Lady Nirea up to him, slapped her face lightly, kissed her open mouth. “Quick, wench, hop when I speak!” A touch of starshine glistened on his grin-bared teeth. Then he turned and leaped off the rock shelf.

  * * * *

  The nearest mine was guarded by three gods, nervously jiggling up and down in grotesque little air-dances; below them sat half a dozen hideous-headed zanphs. Revel crawled up toward the entrance. At the first touch of an alien mind on his own, he shot forward, pick flailing. Two gods he caught with one stroke, the third began to rise and his backswing took it on the underside and tore a gash as if the pick had struck a rubber bag: yellow gore dropped in a flood. He had no time to wonder if the third globe had telepathed a distress signal, for the zanphs were on him.

  Their snake-like heads were fitted with only two teeth in each jaw, yet those were four inches long and thick as a man’s thumb at the base, tapering to needle points. One zanph, propelled by all the vigor of its six legs, rose like a rocketing pheasant and clamped its jaws across his left arm. It overshot, and two teeth missed; but the others dug down into the flesh and grated on the ulna bone.

  He gave it a jab of the handle of his pickax between its cold pupilless eyes, and it swung limp, losing consciousness but anchored to his arm by the frightful teeth. He cracked the neck of another zanph with his foot, spitted a third, and then Rack and Jerran were slaying the others. John appeared and lifted the first one’s body so that Revel could disengage the teeth from his bloody arm.

  “What a beastie,” marveled the Ancient Kingdom man. “How I’d love to dissect one!” Revel, puzzling over the word “dissect,” went into the mine.

  “Jerran, come along. You others remain, and keep off any intruders.”

  There were but three levels in this mine, and he covered them rapidly, Jerran at his heels. He slew seven more spheres, with four zanphs. His blood was up and his tongue lolled with excitement.

  To his banner, which was a dead god on Jerran’s pick, there came forty-three miners. Four others declined, and were allowed to stay at their posts, true to their false gods and the service of the gentry.

  Coming out of this mine, he led a small army, and felt like a conquering general already. In two hours he had invaded every shaft in the valley, and six hundred men less a score or so were at his back.

  “How’s this for a start?” he asked Nirea, meeting her walking her roan on the grass. She glanced at the mass of men, all those in the van carrying dead globes. “Not bad ... but have you seen the sky, Mink?”

  He looked upward. From horizon to horizon the sky was ablaze with circles of light, red and green and violet, pure terrible white and flickering yellow. The buttons, murmured his men behind him. The buttons are awake!

  “You couldn’t expect to do it in secret, Revel,” said John. The old man was as spry and eager as a boy, thought the Mink. “Now let’s not waste time. I’m banking that the invaders, I mean the globes, won’t blast this valley except as a last resort; if they read my mind, or if their science has gone far enough for ‘em to recognize an anti-force-screen thrower when they see one, then we’re practically atom soup now.”

  Revel, having understood at least one portion of the speech—“Let’s not waste time”—waved his miners forward.

  They filled the shaft and the tunnel, they thronged into the cave; when the Mink had shown them the machine to be moved, they fought one another for the honor of being first to touch it.

  * * * *

  It stood solidly on the floor, ten feet high, twelve wide, square and black with twin coils and a thick projection like an enormous gun on the top. Men jammed around it, bent and gripped a ledge near the bottom, heaved up. Loath to move, it rocked a bit, then was hoisted off the ground. They staggered forward with it.

  The hole in the wall was far too small.

  “Miners! The best of you, and I don’t want braggarts and second-raters, but the best! Tear down that wall!” Revel stood on a case and roared his commands. Men pushed out of the tunnel’s throng, big bearded men, small tough men. They stood shoulder to shoulder and at a word began to swing their picks. Up and down, up and down, smite, smite, carve the rock away....

  Soon they picked up the machine again, and manhandled it out into the tunnel. The crowd pressed back, and the Mink bellowed for the distant ones to go up the shaft to the top.

  “How you going to get it up to the ground?” asked John. His voice had a kind of confidence in it, a respect for Revel that surprised the big miner. John evidently b
elieved in him, was even relying on his mind when John himself was so overwhelmingly intelligent. Revel wondered: if he, the Mink, were to fall asleep and wake in a future time, knowing all his friends and relatives were dead long since, knowing his whole world had vanished ... would he be as calm and alert and interested in things as John?

  There was a man, by—what was the expression he used?—by god!

  “We’ll get it there,” he said. “So long as you can work it, John, there aren’t any worries.”

  “Understatement of the millenium, or is that the word I want? Optimistic crack o’ the year. Okay, Revel. It’s your baby.”

  Slowly the men carried the machine to the lip of the shaft. Nothingness yawned above for ninety feet, below for over a hundred. The shaft was twenty feet across. “Now what?” asked Lady Nirea.

  “There’s an ore bucket at the bottom; we toss our coal down the shaft, and once a day the bucket’s drawn up to the top, by a hoisting mechanism worked by ten men, and the coal’s emptied out and taken away in small loads. The bucket fills that shaft. It’s two feet deep but so broad it holds plenty of coal. You can see the cable out there in the center; it’s as tough as anything on earth.”

  “I see your idea,” said John. “I hope that cable’s tough. The machine weighs a couple of tons.”

  “Tons?”

  “I mean it’s heavy!”

  * * * *

  Revel bawled for the men at the top to start the winch. Shortly they heard the creak and groan of the ore bucket, coming slowly toward their level. When its rim was just level with the floor of the tunnel, the Mink let go a yell that halted the men on the windlass like a pickax blow in the belly; then Revel said, “All right, move it onto the bucket!”

  “For God’s sake, be careful of it,” said John. “That’s a delicate thing.” He leaped down into the huge bucket. “Take it easy,” he cautioned the miners, straining and sweating at the work. “Easy ... easy ... easy!”

  The great square mysterious box thrust out over the lip, teetered there as if it would plunge into the bucket. John with a screech of anguish jumped forward and thrust at it with both hands.