The Pool of Fire (The Tripods)

by John Christopher

  He was in a mild state of shock for the first couple of days, and then went into what I recognized as the Sickness: the Curse of the Skloodzi my old Master had called it. Brown patches appeared on the green of his skin, his tentacles quivered all the time, and he himself was apathetic, not responding to stimuli. We had no way of treating him, not even the gas-bubbles which the Masters in the City used to alleviate pain or discomfort, and he just had to get over it as best he could. Fortunately, he did so. I went into his cell a week after he had been taken and found him back to a healthy shade of green and showing a distinct interest in food.

  Earlier, he had made no response to questions in any of the human languages we tried. He still did not do so, and we began to wonder, despondently, whether we had picked on one of the few Masters without such knowledge. After a few days of this, though, and since he was plainly back to full health, one of the scientists suspected that the ignorance was feigned. We were told not to bring any hot water for his pool the next morning. He quickly showed evidence of discomfort and even indulged in sign language, going to the empty hole and waving his tentacles at it. We paid no attention to this. As we prepared to leave the room he finally spoke, in the dull booming voice they used. In German, he said, “Bring me water. I need to bathe.”

  I looked up at him, a wrinkled misshapen monster twice my own height.

  “Say please,” I told him.

  But that was a word they had never learned in any of our languages. He merely repeated: “Bring me water.”

  “You wait,” I said. “I’ll see what the scientists say.”

  Once the barrier was down, he did not attempt to go mute again. Nor, on the other hand, was he particularly forthcoming. He answered some questions that were put to him, and treated others with an obdurate silence. It was not always easy to work out the basis on which he chose to respond or stay silent. There were obvious blanks where questions were pertinent to a possible defense of the City, but it was difficult to see why, for instance, after talking freely on the role of human slaves and the opposition to this by some of the Masters, he should have refused to say anything about the Sphere Chase. This was the sport of which all the Masters seemed to be passionately fond, played on a triangular arena in the center of the City. I suppose in a remote way it resembled basketball, except that there were seven “baskets,” the players were miniature Tripods, and the ball was a flashing golden sphere which seemed to appear out of thin air. Ruki would not answer a single question on that subject.

  During my long months of slavery, I had never known the name of my Master, nor if he had a name: he was always “Master,” and I was “boy.” One could scarcely call our prisoner by such a title. We asked him his name and he told us it was Ruki. In a very short time I found I was thinking of him as that—as an individual, that is, as well as a representative of the enemy who held our world in subjection and whom we must destroy. I had known already, of course, that the Masters had differing characteristics. My own had been relatively easygoing, Fritz’s brutal by comparison. They had different interests, too. But any distinctions I had made between them in the City had been severely practical; one looked for them in order to exploit them. In this altered situation one saw things from a more detached point of view.

  One day, for instance, I had been delayed in bringing him his evening meal by something which Ulf had given me to do. I came in through the airlock to find him squatting in the center of the room, and said something about being sorry I was late. He made a slight twirling gesture with one tentacle, and boomed at me, “It is not important, when there are so many interesting things to do and to see.”

  The blank featureless walls of his prison were all around him, lit by the two small lamps, colored green for his convenience, which provided illumination. The only breaks in the monotony were provided by the door and the hole in the floor. (It served as a bed for him, as well as a bath, with seaweed in place of the mossy stuff that was used in the City.) One could not read expression into these completely alien features—the neckless head with its three eyes and orifices for breathing and eating, connected by a weird pattern of wrinkles—but at this moment he looked, in a peculiar fashion, lugubrious and rueful. I realized something, at any rate: that he was making a joke! Feeble, admittedly, but a joke. It was the first indication I had had that they might have even a rudimentary sense of humor.

  I had instructions to enter into conversation with him as much as possible, as Fritz did. The scientists examined him in more formal sessions, but it was thought that we might also pick something up. We reported to one of the examiners every time we left the cell, repeating what had been said, word for word as far as we could. I began to find this interesting in itself, and easier. He would not always say much in reply to my promptings, but at times he did.

  On the question of the slaves in the City, for instance, he was quite voluble. It emerged that he was one of those who had opposed this. The usual basis of such opposition, as I had discovered, was not through any consideration for the poor wretches whose lives were so brutally shortened by the heat and the leaden weight, and the ill treatment they were given, but because it was felt that dependence on slaves might weaken the strength of the Masters and eventually, perhaps, their will to survive and go on spreading their conquests through the universe. In Ruki’s case, though, there seemed to be some small but genuine feeling of sympathy toward men. He did not accept that the Masters had been wrong in taking over the earth, and using the Caps to keep human beings subservient to them. He believed that men were happier in that state than they had been before the coming of the Masters. There was less disease and starvation now, and men were free of the curse of war. It was true they still resorted occasionally to violence against each other in the course of disputes, and this was horrifying enough from the Masters’ point of view, but at least it was kept on that level. An end had been made to that hideous state of affairs in which men could be taken from their homes and sent to far lands, there to kill or be killed by strangers with whom they had no direct or personal quarrel. It seemed a hideous state of affairs to me, too, but I realized that Ruki’s disapproval was much stronger—more passionate I would almost say—than my own.

  This in itself, in his eyes, justified the conquest and the Capping. The men and women who were Capped enjoyed their lives. Even the Vagrants did not appear to be particularly unhappy, and the overwhelming majority led peaceful and fruitful lives, with much ceremony and celebration.

  I was reminded of a man who had been in charge of a traveling circus when I was a boy. He had talked of his animals in much the way Ruki did of men. Wild animals, he said, were subject to disease, and spent their days and nights either hunting or hunted, but in either case struggling to get enough food to avoid starvation. The ones in his circus, on the other hand, were sleek and fat. What he had said had seemed sensible then, but was not compelling now.

  Ruki, at any rate, while approving the Masters’ control of the planet, and of the undisciplined warlike creatures who had previously ruled it, thought it was wrong to bring them into the City. He was confirmed in his view, of course, by finding that somehow, despite their Caps, one or more of the slaves had given information to those of us who remained rebellious. (We had not told him that, nor anything else that could possibly be useful to the Masters, but it was not difficult for him to work out that some leakage must have occurred for us to be able to reproduce their air and food.) You could see that, despite his own captivity, he obtained a kind of satisfaction from having been proved right in his stand.

  This was not to say that he had any fear that our attempt to rebel against the Masters might be successful. He seemed to be impressed by our ingenuity in having carried out the attack against the Tripod in which he had been traveling; but it was much as a man would be impressed by a hound following a scent or a sheepdog bringing its charges back to the pen through many hazards. All this was interesting, and clever, although a nuisance to him personally. It could make no differen
ce to the real state of things. The Masters were not to be overthrown by a handful of impudent pygmies.

  He was studied in various physical ways by our scientists. I was present at some of these sessions. He never showed any sign of resistance, or even of displeasure (though it is doubtful if we would recognize displeasure any more than other emotions in him), but submitted to the probings and blood-lettings and staring through magnifying glasses as though these were not happening to him at all but to another. The only complaints he did make, in fact, were about the water or the room itself not being hot enough. The scientists had rigged up a form of heating by this thing called electricity, and I found the room stifling, but by his standards it was cold.

  His food and drink were also tampered with. The intention was to see what effect certain substances might have on him, but the experiment did not meet with success. He seemed to have some way of sensing the presence of anything which might be harmful, and in those cases simply refused to touch what was put in front of him. On one occasion, after this had happened three times in succession, I spoke to Beanpole about it.

  I asked him, “Do we have to do this sort of thing? At least we were given food and water, even as slaves in the City. Ruki has been nearly two days without anything. It seems unnecessarily cruel.”

  Beanpole said, “It’s cruel to keep him here at all, if you care to think of it that way. The cell is too small, and not warm enough, and he does not have the heavy gravity he was used to.”

  “Those are things that can’t be helped. Putting stuff in his food and making him go without when he won’t eat it is not quite the same.”

  “We have to do everything we can to find their weak spots. You found one yourself: that place between mouth and nose where a blow will kill them. But it does not help us much, because there is no way of being able to strike them all at that point at the same time. We need to find something else. Something we can use.”

  I saw the point, but was not entirely convinced.

  “I’m sorry it has to be him. I would rather it were one like Fritz’s Master, or even mine. Ruki does not seem so bad as most. At least, he was opposed to using men as slaves.”

  “So he tells you.”

  “But they do not lie. They cannot. I learned that at least in the City. My Master could never understand the difference between story tales and lies—they were all the same to him.”

  “They may not lie,” Beanpole said, “but they do not always tell the full truth, either. He said he was opposed to slaves. What about the plan to turn our air into the choking green gas they breathe? Has he said anything about being opposed to that?”

  “He’s never said anything at all about it.”

  “But he knows about it: they all do. He has not spoken of it because he does not know that we know. He may be not quite as bad as some of the others, but he is one of them. They have never had wars. The loyalty they have to their own kind is something which we probably do not understand any more than they can understand the way we fight among ourselves. But if we do not understand it, we must still reckon with it. And we must use every weapon we can against it. If this involves putting him to some discomfort—if it involves killing him—that is not so important. Only one thing is important: winning the struggle.”

  I said, “You do not need to remind me.”

  Beanpole smiled. “I know. Anyway, his food will be normal next time. We do not want to kill him if we can help it. There is more chance of him being useful to us if he remains alive.”

  “Not much sign of it so far.”

  “We must keep trying.”

  We had been sitting out on the ruined seaward battlement of the castle, enjoying an afternoon of still air and pale wintry sunshine; the sun was an orange disk dropping toward a haze-filled western horizon. The peace was interrupted now by a familiar voice, bawling from the courtyard behind us.

  “Parker! Where are you, you useless lump of awkwardness? Here! And at once, I tell you.”

  I sighed, and prepared to stir myself. Beanpole said, “Ulf is not getting too much for you, I hope, Will.”

  I shrugged. “It would be all the same, if he were.”

  He said, “We want you and Fritz as Ruki’s attendants because you are both used to these creatures, and so are better at noticing anything strange. But I do not think Julius realized how much friction there would be between you and Ulf.”

  “The friction you get,” I said, “between a log of wood and a saw. And I am not the saw.”

  “If it is too difficult . . . it would be possible for you to be transferred to other duties.”

  He said it diffidently, as much as anything else, I think, because he did not wish to emphasize his own higher status—that he could in fact arrange something like this. I said, “I can put up with him.”

  “Perhaps if you did not make such a point of doing just that . . .”

  “Doing what?”

  “Putting up with him. I think it makes him angrier.”

  I was astonished. I said, with some indignation, “I obey orders, and promptly. What more can he ask?”

  Beanpole sighed. “Yes. Well, I’d better be getting back to work myself, anyway.”

  • • •

  I had noticed one difference in the Ulf of the Erlkönig and the one who now made my life a misery at the castle. The old Ulf had been a drinking man: the whole business of Beanpole and me leaving the barge had started when he did not return on time and his assistant suspected that he had gone drinking in one of the town’s taverns. Here he did not drink at all. Some of the older men would take an occasional nip of brandy, against the cold as they said, but not him. He did not even drink the beer which was a more common drink, or the rough red wine that was served with our dinner. At times I wished that he would. I felt it might sweeten his temper a little.

  Then one day a messenger from Julius came to the castle. I have no idea what message he brought, but he also carried with him a couple of long brown stone jars. And it seemed that he was an old acquaintance of Ulf’s. The jars contained schnapps, a raw colorless spirit which was drunk in Germany and which, it seemed, he and Ulf had often drunk together. Perhaps it was the unexpected sight of an old friend which weakened Ulf’s resolution, or perhaps it was just that he preferred schnapps to the drinks that had been available in the castle. At any rate, I noticed the two of them sitting together in the guardroom, a jar between them and a small tumbler in front of each. I was glad to have Ulf distracted by anything, and happily kept out of the way.

  In the afternoon, the messenger went on again, but he left the remaining jar with Ulf. Ulf was already showing signs of intoxication—he had not bothered to eat anything at midday—and he broached the second jar and sat drinking on his own. He appeared to have settled into a melancholy mood, not talking to anyone and seemingly not noticing much of what was going on around him. This was, of course, very wrong in a guard commander, though it might be said in his defense that things had settled into a routine in which we all knew our duties and carried them out. For my part, I was not concerned either with censuring or finding justification for him, but simply glad of the absence of his raucous voice.

  It had been a somber day, and dusk came early. I prepared Ruki’s meal—a porridge-like mess, more liquid than solid—and crossed the guardroom with it on my way to the corridor leading to his cell. The natural light in the guardroom came from a couple of windows, high up and now quite dark. I could only just make out the figure of Ulf, behind his table, with the jar in front of him. I ignored him, but he called to me, “Where d’you think you’re going?”

  His voice was slurred. I said, “Taking the prisoner his meal, sir.”

  “Come here!”

  I went and stood in front of the table, holding the tray. Ulf said, “Why haven’t you lit the lamp?”

  “It’s not time yet.”

  Nor was it. It wanted another quarter hour to the time laid down by Ulf himself. If I had lit it early, on account of the day’s early
darkening, he would have been as likely to pick on that as a breach of one of his rules.

  “Light it,” he said. “And don’t answer me back, Parker. When I tell you to do something, you do it, and do it fast. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir. But the regulations say . . .”

  He stood up, swaying slightly, from his seat, and leaned forward with his hands on the table. I could smell the spirits on his breath.

  “You’re insub . . . insubordinate, Parker, and I won’t stand for it. You’ll take an extra guard tonight. And now you’ll put that tray down, and light the lamp. Is that clear?”

  I did as I was told, silently. The lamplight gleamed on his heavy face, flushed with drink. I said coldly, “If that is all, sir, I will proceed with my duties.”

  He stared at me a moment. “Can’t wait to get in to that pal of yours, is that it? Chatting with the big lizard is easier than working—that right?”

  I moved to pick up the tray. “May I go now, sir?”

  “Wait.”

  I stood there obediently. Ulf laughed, picked up the tumbler, and emptied it into the bowl of food prepared for Ruki. I looked at it, without moving.

  “Go on,” he said. “Take your pal his supper. Got a little something in it to liven him up now.”

  I knew perfectly well what I ought to have done. Ulf was indulging in a silly drunken jest. I should have taken the tray out and made up another bowl for Ruki, throwing this one away. Instead, I asked, in the most obedient but contemptuous fashion, “Is that an order, sir?”

  His anger was as great as mine, but hot where mine was cold. And his mind was blurred by drink. He said, “Do as you’re told, Parker. And jump to it!”

  I picked up the tray and left. I had a glimpse of what Beanpole had meant—I could have mollified Ulf with a little effort, and passed the whole thing off. I am afraid that what I was thinking was that this time he had put himself in the wrong. Ruki would refuse the food, as he refused anything which differed even slightly from what he was used to. I would have to report on this, and the incident would then be brought to light. Simply by obeying orders and acting according to regulations, I had my chance to get my own back at my tormentor.