XIII
Kennedy turned out to have been an armorer-artificer of the NorthAmerican Navy, captured two years ago while deer-hunting too far fromthe logging-camp road to New Portsmouth. Fed on scraps of gristle,isolated from his kind, beaten when he failed to make his daily task ofspear heads and arrow points, he had shyly retreated into beautifullyinterminable labyrinths of abstraction. Now and then, Charles Orsino gota word or two of sense from him before the rosy clouds closed in. Whenattempted conversation with the lunatic palled, Charles could watch theaborigines through chinks in the palisade. There were about fifty ofthem. There would have been more if they hadn't been given toinfanticide--for what reason, Charles could not guess.
He had been there a week when the boulders were rolled away one morningand he was roughly called out. He said to Kennedy before stooping tocrawl through the hole: "Take it easy, friend. I'll be back, I hope."
Kennedy looked up with a puzzled smile: "That's such a _general_statement, Charles. Exactly what are you implying--"
The witch girl was there, flanked by spearmen. She said abruptly: "Ihave been listening to you. Why are you untrue to your brothers?"
He gawked. The only thing that seemed to fit was: "That's such a_general_ statement," but he didn't say it.
"Answer," one of the spearmen growled.
"I--I don't understand. I have no brothers."
"Your brothers in Portsmouth, on the sea. Whatever you call them, theyare your brothers, all children of the mother called Government. Why areyou untrue to them?"
He began to understand. "They aren't my brothers. I'm not a child of thegovernment. I'm a child of another mother far away, called Syndic."
She looked puzzled--and almost human--for an instant. Then the visordropped over her face again as she said: "That is true. Now you mustteach a certain person the jeep and the guns. Teach her well. See thatshe gets her hands on the metal and into the grease." To a spearman shesaid: "Bring Martha."
The spearman brought Martha, who was trying not to cry. She was ahalf-naked child of ten!
The witch girl abruptly left them. Her guards took Martha and bewilderedCharles to the edge of the village where the jeep and its mounted gunsstood behind a silly little museum exhibit rope of vine. Feathers andbones were knotted into the vine. The spearmen treated it as though itwere a high-tension transmission line.
"_You_ break it," one of them said to Charles. He did, and the spearmensighed with relief. Martha stopped scowling and stared.
The spearman said to Charles: "Go ahead and teach her. The firing pinsare out of the guns, and if you try to start the jeep you get a spearthrough you. Now teach her." He and the rest squatted on the turf aroundthe jeep. The little girl shied violently as he took her hand, and triedto run away. One of the spearmen slung her back into the circle. Shebrushed against the jeep and froze, white-faced.
"Martha," Charles said patiently, "there's nothing to be afraid of. Theguns won't go off and the jeep won't move. I'll teach you how to workthem so you can kill everybody you don't like with the guns and gofaster than a deer in the jeep--"
He was talking into empty air as far as the child was concerned. She wasmuttering, staring at the arm that had brushed the jeep: "That did it, Iguess. There goes the power. May the goddess blast her--no. The power'sout of me now. I felt it go." She looked up at Charles, quite calmly,and said: "Go on. Show me all about it. Do a good job."
"Martha, what are you talking about?"
"She was afraid of me, my sister, so she's robbing me of the power.Don't you know? I guess not. The goddess hates iron and machines. I hadthe power of the goddess in me, but it's gone now; I felt it go. Nownobody'll be afraid of me any more." Her face contorted and she said:"Show me how you work the guns."
* * * * *
He taught her what he could while the circle of spearmen looked on andgrinned, cracking raw jokes about the child as anybody anywhere, wouldabout a tyrant deposed. She pretended to ignore them, grimly repeatingnames after him and imitating his practiced movements in loading drill.She was very bright, Charles realized. When he got a chance he muttered,"I'm sorry about this, Martha. It isn't my idea."
She whispered bleakly: "I know. I liked you. I was sorry when the otheroutsider took your dinner." She began to sob uncontrollably. "I'll neversee anything again! Nobody'll ever be afraid of me again!" She buriedher face against Charles' shoulder.
He smoothed her tangled hair mechanically and said to the watching,grinning circle: "Look, hasn't this gone far enough? Haven't you gotwhat you wanted?"
The headman stretched and spat. "Guess so," he said. "Come on, girl." Heyanked Martha from the seat and booted her toward the huts.
Charles scrambled down just ahead of a spear. He let himself be led backto the smithy block house and shoved through the crawl hole.
"I was thinking about what you said the other day," Kennedy beamed,rasping a file over an arrowhead. "When I said that to change onemolecule in the past you'd have to change _every_ molecule in the past,and you said, 'Maybe so.' I've figured that what you were driving atwas--"
"Kennedy," Charles said, "please shut up just this once. I've got tothink."
"In what sense do you mean that, Charles? Do you mean that you're arational animal and therefore that your _being_ rather than _essense_is--"
"_Shut up or I'll pick up a rock and bust your head in with it!_"Charles roared. He more than half meant it. Kennedy hunched down beforehis hearth looking offended and scared. Charles squatted with his headin his hands.
_I have been listening to you._
Repeated drives of the Government to wipe out the aborigines. Drivesthat never succeeded.
_I'll never see anything again._
The way the witch girl had blasted her rival--but that was suggestion.But--
_I have been listening to you. Why are you untrue to your brothers?_
He'd said nothing like that to anybody, not to her or poor Kennedy.
He thought vaguely of _psi_ force, a fragment in his memory. An oldsuperstition, like the id-ego-superego triad of the sick-mindedpsychologists. Like vectors of the mind, exploded nonsense. But--
_I have been listening to you. Why are you untrue to your brothers?_
Charles smacked one fist against the sand floor in impotent rage. He wasgoing as crazy as Kennedy. Did the witch girl--and Martha--havehereditary _psi_ power? He mocked himself savagely: that's such a_general_ question!
Neurotic adolescent girls in kerosene-lit farmhouses, he thoughtvaguely. Things that go bump--and crash and blooie and _whoo-oo-oo!_ inthe night. Not in electric lit city apartments. Not around fleshed-upmiddle-aged men and women. You take a hyperthyroid virgin, isolate herfrom power machinery and electric fields, put on the pressures that makeher feel alone and tense to the bursting point--and naturally enough,something bursts. A chamberpot sails from under the bed and shatters onthe skull of stepfather-tyrant. The wide-gilt-framed portrait ofthundergod-grandfather falls with a crash. Sure, the nail crystallizedand broke--_who crystallized it?_
Neurotic adolescent girls speaking in tongues, reading face-down cardsand closed books, screaming aloud when sister or mother dies in arailroad wreck fifty miles away, of cancer a hundred miles away, in abombing overseas.
Sometimes they made saints of them. Sometimes they burned them. Burnedthem and _then_ made saints of them.
A blood-raw hunk of venison came sailing through one of the loopholesand flopped on the sand.
_I was sorry when the other outsider took your dinner._
Three days ago he'd dozed off while Kennedy broiled the meat over thehearth. When he woke, Kennedy had gobbled it all and was whimpering withapprehension. But he'd done nothing and said nothing; the man wasn'tresponsible. He'd said nothing, and yet somehow the child knew about it.
His days were numbered; soon enough the jeep would be out of gas and theguns would be out of ammo or an unreplaceable part lost or broken. Then,according to the serene logic that ruled the wi
tch girl, he'd besurplus.
But there was a key to it somehow.
He got up and slapped Kennedy's hand away from the venison. "Naughty,"he said, and divided it equally with a broad spearblade.
"Naughty," Kennedy said morosely. "The naught-class, the null-class. I'mthe null-class. I plus the universe equal one, the universe-class. Ifyou could transpose--but you can't transpose." Silently they toastedtheir venison over the fire.
* * * * *
It was a moonless night with one great planet, Jupiter he supposed,reigning over the star-powdered sky. Kennedy slept muttering feebly in acorner. The hearthfire was out. It had to be out by dark. The spearmentook no chance of their trying to burn down the place. The village hadlong since gone to sleep, campfires doused, skin flaps pulled to acrossthe door holes. From the corral one of the spavined, tick-ridden cowsmooed uneasily and then fell silent.
* * * * *
Charles then began the hardest job of his life. He tried to think,straight and uninterrupted, of Martha, the little girl. Some of thethings that interrupted him were:
The remembered smell of fried onions; they didn't have onions here;
Salt;
I wonder how the old 101st Precinct's getting along;
That fellow who wanted to get married on a hundred dollars;
Lee Falcaro, damn her!
This, is damn foolishness; it can't possibly work;
Poor old Kennedy;
I'll starve before I eat another mouthful of that greasy deer-meat;
The Van Dellen kid, I wonder if I could have saved him;
Reiner's right; we've got to clean up the Government and then try tocivilize these people;
There must be something wrong with my head, I can't seem toconcentrate;
That terrific third-chukker play in the Finals, my picture all overtown;
Would Uncle Frank laugh at this?
It was hopeless. He sat bolt upright, his eyes squeezed tenselytogether, trying to visualize the child and call her and it couldn't bedone. Skittering images of her zipped through his mind, only to beshoved aside. It was damn foolishness, anyway....
He unkinked himself, stretched and lay down on the sand floor thinkingbitterly: why try? You'll be dead in a few days or a few weeks; kiss theworld good-bye. Back in Syndic Territory, fat, sloppy, happy SyndicTerritory, did they know how good they had it? He wished he could tellthem to cling to their good life. But Uncle Frank said it didn't do anygood to cling; it was a matter of tension and relaxation. When youstiffen up a way of life and try to fossilize it so it'll stay that wayforever, then you find you've lost it.
Little Martha wouldn't understand it. Magic, ritual, the power of thegoddess, fear of iron, fear of the jeep's vine enclosure--cursed, nodoubt--what went on in such a mind? Could she throw things like apoltergeist-girl? They didn't have 'em any more; maybe it had somethingto do with electric fields or even iron. Or were they all phonies? Anupset adolescent girl is a hell of a lot likelier to fake phenomena thatproduce them. Little Martha hadn't been faking her despair, though. Thewitch-girl--her sister, wasn't she?--didn't fake her icy calm and power.Martha'd be better off without such stuff--
"_Charles_," a whisper said.
He muttered stupidly: "My God. She heard me," and crept to the palisade.Through a chink between the logs she was just visible in the starlight.
She whispered: "I thought I wasn't going to see anything or hearanything ever again but I sat up and I heard you calling and you saidyou wanted to help me if I'd help you so I came as fast as I couldwithout waking anybody up--you _did_ call me, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did. Martha, do you want to get out of here? Go far away withme?"
"You bet I do. _She's_ going to take the power of the goddess out of meand marry me to Dinny, he stinks like a goat and he has a cockeye, andthen she'll kill all our babies. Just tell me what to do and I'll doit." She sounded very grim and decided.
"Can you roll the boulders away from the hole there?" He was thinkingvaguely of teleportation; each boulder was a two-man job.
She said no.
He snarled: "Then why did you bother to come here?"
"Don't talk like that to me," the child said sharply--and he rememberedwhat she thought she was.
"Sorry," he said.
"What I came about," she said calmly, "was the ex-plosion. Can you makean ex-plosion like you said? Back there at the jeep?"
What in God's name was she talking about?
"Back there," she said with exaggerated patience, "you was thinkingabout putting all the cartridges together and blowing up the whole damnshebang. Remember?"
He did, vaguely. One of a hundred schemes that had drifted through hishead.
"I'd sure like to see that ex-plosion," she said. "The way _she_ gotthings figured, I'd almost just as soon get exploded myself as not."
"I might blow up the logs here and get out," he said slowly. "I thinkyou'd be a mighty handy person to have along, too. Can you get me abouta hundred of the machine gun cartridges?"
"They'll miss 'em."
"Sneak me a few at a time. I'll empty them, put them together again andyou sneak them back."
She said, slow and troubled: "_She_ set the power of the goddess toguard them."
"Listen to me, Martha," he said. "I mean _listen_. You'll be doing itfor me and they told me the power of the goddess doesn't work onoutsiders. Isn't that right?"
There was a long pause, and she said at last with a sigh: "I sure wish Icould see your eyes, Charles. I'll try it, but I'm damned if I would ifDinny didn't stink so bad." She slipped away and Charles tried to followher with his mind through the darkness, to the silly little rope of vinewith the feathers and bones knotted in it--but he couldn't. Too tenseagain.
Kennedy stirred and muttered complainingly as an icy small breeze cutthrough the chinks of the palisade, whispering.
His eyes, tuned to the starlight, picked up Martha bent almost double,creeping toward the smithy-prison. She wore a belt of fifty-calibercartridges around her neck like a stole. Looked like about a dozen ofthem. He hastily scooped out a bowl of clean sand and whispered: "Anytrouble?"
He couldn't see the grin on her face, but knew it was there. "It waseasy," she bragged. "One bad minute and then I checked with you and itwas okay."
"Good kid. Pull the cartridges out of the links the way I showed you andpass them through."
She did. It was a tight squeeze.
He fingered one of the cartridges. The bullet fitted nicely into thesocket of an arrowhead. He jammed the bullet in and wrenched at thearrowhead with thumb and forefinger--all he could get onto it. The brassneck began to spread. He dumped the powder into his little basin in thesand and reseated the bullet.
Charles shifted hands on the second cartridge. On the third he realizedthat he could put the point of the bullet on a hearth-stone and press onthe neck with both thumbs. It went faster then; in perhaps an hour hewas passing the re-assembled cartridges back through the palisade.
"Time for another load?" he asked.
"Nope," the girl said. "Tomorrow night."
"Good kid."
She giggled. "It's going to be a hell of a big bang, ain't it, Charles?"
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