On the ground floor were several large spaces, almost rooms, with an oval configuration, that served as combination hotel lobby, dining room, marketplace, and campsite. He passed several groups of desert nomads wearing white or gray robes, sitting around horribly smoky campfires in front of their black tents.
At one end, next to a crescent-shaped opening, a long counter had been erected. It was of marble, pockmarked here and there by bullets. Over it a tangle of barbed wire was supported on steel struts. At one end a machine-gun emplacement kept a pair of barrels directed out at the rest of the room. A big sign in several languages warned against the open use of guns.
Jon found that by paying over more laowon notes he could rent a space inside the security zone of the fort, but he had to check his weapons first and the checkers were thorough, removing even the monofil blade from his boot.
He went on through the crescent-shaped passage formed by the accidental resting together of two massive plates. Inside he found rooms that might easily have been in a hotel lobby on another world, or even Hyperion Grandee. Elegantly decorated with rugs and wall hangings, they were lit by fiber optics to a pleasant dimness.
First he found his space, a coffin-shaped cubicle large enough for a bed and a sleeper. He visited a communal shower and hosed off the sweat and grime of the journey. Then he returned to the main rooms and found a bar.
Slaking his thirst with a cold beer and marveling at finding such a luxury in that harsh environment, he listened to the conversation around him.
Several trail guides, identifiable by name badges on their desert shirts, were discussing some incident at the bar.
"It just goes to show that you simply cannot expect deep-desert mutants to deal honestly. They don't understand the logic of a repeat customer. All they want is your money and then they want your flesh," said one with a round badge of scarlet and gold that proclaimed "Umpuk's Trailways, the best for ten years."
"Look, Angle," said another in a black suit with "Bayu Nashe" stenciled on his back in white, "there are some deep-desert mutes you can use. You just have to be careful. It's the same with everything in the deep—you have to use the mutes, you have to talk to them if you want to know what happens down there. Nobody else goes there, you understand. Nobody else knows."
"Bah, they're totally untrustworthy and they'd soon as kill you for the larder as look at you," Angle Umpuk replied.
"Well, this group was unusually foolish if you ask me. It was plain to see. Imagine hiring Hardscabbies!" a third man said.
"With women, including attractive ones in the group. Incredible!" agreed Umpuk.
"They deserved what happened. Such foolishness had to be punished most intensely. It is the law of the desert."
Jon felt a tremor at these words. Officers Bergen, Dahn, and Rena Kolod had been with the Orner group. Were they the women under discussion?
He was about to investigate when a movement caught his eye. A tall figure in red was coming through the tables at the far end of the bar. A laowon, bodyguards behind him, striding unconcerned through the treasure hunters, looters, slavers, and guides at the tables around him.
Jon looked for marks of nobility on the lao's tunic and found none. A rogue then, an adventurer, some lordling who had been thrust out of his family. Or possibly an upstart, some laowon commoner or criminal, with the mass of wealth required to travel the far spacelanes.
The laowon had leather accoutrements, shiny from use, including a holster at his hip. Jon looked after the retreating back and then slipped across to the bar.
The guide named Angle Umpuk met his gaze.
"You're wondering what a blue lord of the universe is doing out here in this forsaken waste?"
"Precisely."
"That's Romsini. He's lived out in the forelands for thirty years, they say. Big treasure hunter—found forty pops and snaps in one cache." Umpuk extended a hand, they shook.
"I'm Angle Umpuk, treasure guide for the North Shore and the lesser Boneyards."
"Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Umpuk. I couldn't help overhearing your conversation about a group, with women, that was in trouble."
"Trouble? I'll say. They came through late last night. Let some mutants talk them into hiring them as trail guides for a trip off the continent, down the Oolite trail somewhere. It sounded like archeological foolishness to me. They wanted to reach the equatorial machines."
The man named Bayu Nashe turned around at those words. He had black hair slicked back along the sides of his head and a small earring in either lobe. "Don't tell me you've got another suicide case there, Angle. Or is he just an archeologist?"
"Suicide?" Jon said.
"Going down the Oolite is bad enough right now because of the groundquakes, but the only remaining fort down there is Harib Zar's at the Guillotine Stone. The Hardscabbies have been cleaning out all the littler places. Last week they busted in the Krib and added another twenty to their meat herds."
Jon's bafflement must have shown.
"It means there's nowhere to seek safety if the mutants try and run you down," Angle said.
"Besides all that," Bayu Nashe continued, "once you get off the continent and down on the ocean floor you're getting into the equatorial dust, and then there's the crustal pits. Walls go straight down for four kilometers. There's thousands of them, scattered throughout the equatorial dust."
Angle Umpuk intervened. "Very few people choose to go that far. Life on the Oolite and the North Shore is dangerous enough, especially now that the Hardscabbies are taking anyone they can find."
"What happened to the group of people?"
Umpuk grimaced. "Poor fools wouldn't listen or wait. I wasn't going to take them down the Oolite, not until sunset anyway. If you put on speed, you can reach the Boneyards in one night that way. And you can shelter down there pretty safely in the day. But as I said they wouldn't wait, took off like they had the Superior Buro after them." Umpuk chuckled at the absurdity of such an idea.
"Of course as soon as they were ten kloms south the Hardscabbies took them, or rather they took half of them. It seems some of them were a bit quicker on the uptake and had taken steps to watch for treachery. They escaped, but most of them, including the females, went down some Hardscabby hole in the wastes. I imagine they'll go for feast meat."
"What happened to the others?"
"They came back here, regrouped, and then set off again. They claimed they were going to rescue their fellows. But they left one behind. You'll find him out on the courtyard. He was just standing there looking stupid so some mutant grabbed him and dragged him into a tent. I should think he'll end up back in the larder."
"How long ago did all this happen?"
"Well, let's see, I think the survivors got back here about dawn. I guess they stayed just long enough to refuel and buy ammunition. Their mantids looked pretty shot up—it must've been a battle down there."
"How many were there?"
"Four of them, one old fellow with long gray hair and three strange young ones. Cultists of some kind, I'd say."
So the Bey had survived with some of the younger Elchites.
Jon thanked Umpuk and headed back to the outer cavern where the mutants were camped. Jon retrieved his Taw Taw and knife and kept a wary eye on the heavy figures slouched outside the tents and balloon-tire trucks.
After a few minutes' search he found Hawkstone, leashed to a peg in the ground with his wrists bound behind his back.
"Captain Hawkstone, we meet again," said Jon, squatting down beside him.
Hawkstone stared at him dully. The events of the past twenty-four hours had been too much for him. His tongue lolled in his open mouth. Jon feared the captain had been reduced to idiocy. "Captain, we've got to get you free now. Do you think you'll be able to walk away beside me if i cut you free?"
The captain's Adam's apple wobbled. He gasped. "Yes. What are you doing here you, traitor? Did you come back to finish us off?"
"I'm no traitor. M'Nee arranged for m
y disappearance. I'll explain more fully later since I see your present employer has put in an appearance."
From within the tent appeared a heavyset mutant. His skin was knobbled and warted and a deep brown. His head was shaved and yellow tusks curled from his mouth. He was a head taller than Jon and considerably wider. His genital pouch had been made from a human skull and he wore little else but shaggy desert boots. In one hand he held a heavy whip made from braided human leather. "What do you do talking to my meat?"
"Who are you?" said Jon, rising to his feet.
"I am Gnush Two Tusks. That is my meat. You will be my meat too unless you go away."
"How much money do you want to free this man?"
"Money? Laowon notes?" the mutant said with a leer. Jon nodded.
"One fifty." Gnush lurched a step closer. "Do you have money on your person now?"
"One fifty is too much, take seventy."
"Seventy! This is fine meat, we will eat for a week on it."
"Seventy is my best offer."
"Mr. Iehard, surely you're not going to let financial considerations enter into this?" Hawkstone said plaintively.
"Seventy, Gnush. That's my offer. It can only go down."
Gnush came closer. On his hip a knife handle projected from a scabbard carved into his own tough hide.
"Why shouldn't I simply take you as meat too? And your money?"
"Because I'll kill you, that's why." Jon's Taw Taw longbarrel appeared in his hand. The mutant blanched slightly. Then he regained composure. He waved toward the nearby machine-gun nest.
"If you fire at me, the guards at the desk will kill you. That is the rule in the cavern. Will you die to save this meat?"
Jon whipped out his own knife and the little monofil blade sparkled between them.
"Then we will duel with knives. It's all the same to me."
"You will be my feast meat. I will force-feed you for six weeks and then we will bake you in your own juices. I can almost taste it now, hot, bubbling with fat. It will be good."
Gnush pulled out his blade. It was astonishingly long, more than half a meter, Jon estimated. In contrast the little monofil seemed like a toy. He wondered if he had miscalculated. Perhaps there was a limit to Gnush's greed. Perhaps he should have offered more. But it was already too late for bargaining.
Gnush moved forward with startling rapidity for one so large. Jon evaded the rush but felt the big knife blade slice along his left cheek. Blood dripped from the cut.
Gnush came again. Jon ducked, weaved, swung a foot into Gnush's midriff. It felt like he'd dropkicked a medicine ball. He moved away, again only just missing a lethal sweep of the big knife.
Gnush lurched after him and surprised him with a sudden punch from the free hand. It caught Jon's shoulder and sent him sprawling.
Gnush chortled and prepared to jump on him knees first. Jon rolled, twisted, felt a big hand catch him by the shoulder. Gnush swung with the flat of the knife. Jon thrust out the monofil and it sliced cleanly through the mutant's blade.
Gnush groaned to immense discontent. Jon slashed at him, the little blade neatly opening up the huge man's arm from wrist to elbow. Blood gushed from the wound, and Gnush roared and tumbled back. Quickly Jon moved after the stricken mutant, who swung a mighty fist that the blade separated into halves. Blood, bones, fragments sprayed Jon and Hawkstone. Gnush let out a vast complaint and staggered back holding his ruined hand.
"You have damaged me!" he exclaimed in agony.
"Get in my way again and I will kill you."
Jon bent and slashed the leash that restrained Hawkstone. He helped the captain to his feet and cut the wrist shackles.
Gnush had been joined by two females of the same mutant tribe. They wore similar skulls over their genitals and their breasts. They tended their fallen giant's wounds with vicious glances at Jon, who lead the slightly stunned Hawkstone away by the elbow.
Later, in the bar, Jon got the rest of the tale out of the captain after plying him with several drams of distillate. He left the captain after a while and went out to find Braunt and the mantid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Melissa Baltitude stared in horrified disgust at the images on the screen where her father was shown being brutally raped by the muscular pinheads of the laowon Brutality Room. Drool was slipping from his lips, his eyes were vacant, staring.
The Superior Buro officer beside her switched it off. "That is the Brutality Room."
"And you call yourselves the higher race." Her voice cracked. "You disgust me, all of you."
The flat golden eyes stared coolly at her. The blue skin was tinged gold in the warm lamplight of the room. It was hard to believe she was on a mighty battlejumper in deep space.
"Nevertheless, you will do exactly as we tell you or you too will undergo that experience, and worse."
Melissa tried to say no; she dug deep for some angry retort to fling in his face. But nothing remained. If they could actually do that to her father, who ruled the Baltitude Gas Company itself, what could they do to her? The realization left a cold pit of fear, a seed of vacuum in her stomach. It ate her strength, she felt her knees tremble.
She knew now how the laowon ruled humanity so easily. If they were prepared to use such vile methods, to do anything in pursuit of their goals, they were unstoppable. No civilized society could stand against them.
"How you can call yourselves a civilization defeats me. You are nothing but barbarians with superior technology. We are the civilized race, and you fear us because of this. Your culture must be thoroughly rotten to allow such disgusting methods."
The laowon in his black tunic with a small blue star merely shrugged. "In truth, there are those who would agree with you. These things are the custom of thousands of years. Many regard them as atavistic, even foolish. But others point to the longevity of our system and its evident success. They say that the Imperiom merely reflects the natural order of evolution. The highest forms are those that control all others and use them as they see fit. Those aspects of first-level civilizations that we have dispensed with include the emotional concept of pity for the weak. The Imperiom allows for no pity. Thus were the Seygfan first developed, thus did they win the Last Laowon War, and thus they remain today, eleven thousand years later."
He paused, fingertips pressed together. "So, your bubble of human civilization, what does it represent? Barely two thousand years of high technology. A competing morass of unconnected powers. Do you mean to say humanity works no cruelties, no injustice, no misuse of power? I can cite examples of human behavior to make you tremble with horror. Your societies too are riddled with the ugliness of the passage to evolutionary glory. Unfortunately for you we came first and we shall rise far above you. The human is not destined to share that glory, but to live as a valued servant of it."
"We would not have oppressed you." Melissa was shaking, but whether from fear or anger she wasn't entirely sure. It was almost like alternating current, one second the rage, the next the fear.
"Would you not? Yet your own history is filled with blatant and horrible examples of oppression between your own nations and tribes! Would you have treated us any better!"
She stared at him, tried to find the words, but realized he was probably correct. The universe was of dark, uncertain purpose. One blundered around in it until one was seized and destroyed. If Arnei Oh's bullet had hit her, perhaps it would have been Suzy America's lot to be there, to have witnessed such a scene.
"What do you want me to do?" she croaked at last. Her throat was dry, horribly so.
The laowon snapped his fingers. The doors opened and a young laowon orderly in space-navy green appeared with a tray and a glass of water.
They had been waiting for her to say that! She wondered if her emotional swings had been chemically orchestrated. She realized she was outfoxed from the start, cornered by giants, a mouse among intelligent lions.
An image sprang into view on the screen. Jon Iehard's narrow face, the deep-s
et dark eyes, the thin lips, cleft chin.
"You know this man?"
"Yes. Slightly."
"You are part of a very privileged group. Very few do know him and of those we have lost two."
"Oh?"
"A woman, that traveled with him. You met her yourself."
"Yes, a compopper. You destroyed her in the Brutality Room."
"There was also a detective. He died."
"How?"
"The details are unimportant. We are processing the rest of his department for any scraps of information we can find. You, however, have been spared the brainwiping. We have a mission for you instead. It involves this man."
—|—
Neither Braunt nor Hawkstone were at all pleased with Jon's decision to include them on the rescue mission to the larders of the Bluegrain Hardscabbies.
Their complaints had gradually worn down from sheer repetition as the mantid headed down the south trail into the machine belt. With the broken window replaced, the air conditioning was working and they drove through the midday brightness in passable comfort. Hawkstone stared out at the ruins in awe.
"It's like driving through an endless city where all the buildings were spaced exactly the same distance apart."
"The Bey told me that the ancients grew these things."
"Grew? How does anyone grow something like that?" Braunt pointed to a structure composed of curving tubes of black eternite.
Jon shrugged.
The machines passed slowly, each five hundred meters from those to the north and south and half that distance from those to the east and west.
Around their bases pleochroic sands drifted, sparkling furiously in the afternoon sun. Gradually the shadows behind them grew longer and darker as the day wore on.
It was like a landscape from a dream, Jon thought. Abruptly he noticed something that stood out against the dreamscape. A human figure, in sand-color desert garb, flitting behind a machine.
"Slow down," he shouted. "Ambush!"
Braunt looked wildly around and prepared to accelerate, but no bullets whined their way. Instead, just ahead a pair of mantids could be seen in the pool of shadow cast by the bulky machine.
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