XIV
"Leave the fire alone," Charles said sharply to Kennedy. The little manwas going to douse it for the night.
There was a flash of terrified sense: "They beat you. If the fire's onafter dark they beat you. Fire and dark are equal and opposite." Hebegan to smile. "Fire is the negative of dark. You just change the sign,in effect rotate it through 180 degrees. But to rotate it through 180degrees you have to first rotate it through one degree. And to rotate itthrough one degree you first have to rotate it through half a degree."He was beaming now, having forgotten all about the fire. Charles bankedit with utmost care, heaping a couple of flat stones for a chimney thatwould preserve the life of one glowing coal invisibly.
He stretched out on the sand, one hand on the little heap beneath whichfive pounds of smokeless powder was buried. Kennedy continued to droneout his power-series happily.
Through the chinks in the palisade a man's profile showed against thetwilight. "Shut up," he said.
Kennedy shivering, rolled over and muttered to himself. The spearmanlaughed and went on.
Charles hardly saw him. His whole mind was concentrated on the sparkbeneath the improvised chimney. He had left such a spark seven nightsrunning. Only twice had it lived more than an hour. Tonight--tonight,it _had_ to last. Tonight was the last night of the witch-girl's monthlycourses, and during them she lost--or thought she lost, which was thesame thing--the power of the goddess.
Primitive aborigines, he jeered silently at himself. A life time wasn'tlong enough to learn the intricacies of their culture--as occasionalexecutions among them for violating magical law proved to the hilt. Hisfirst crude notion--blowing the palisade apart and running likehell--was replaced by a complex escape plan hammered out in detailbetween him and Martha.
Martha assured him that the witch girl could track him through the darkby the power of the goddess except for four days a month--and hebelieved it. Martha herself laid a matter-of-fact claim to keener secondsight than her sister because of her virginity. With Martha to guide himthrough the night and the witch-girl's power disabled, they'd get aday's head start. His hand strayed to a pebble under which jerkedvenison was hidden and ready.
"But Martha. Are you sure you're not--not kidding yourself? Are you_sure_?"
He felt her grin on the other side of the palisade. "You're sure wishingUncle Frank was here so you could ask him about it, don't you, Charles?"
He sure was. He wiped his brow, suddenly clammy.
Kennedy couldn't come along. One, he wasn't responsible. Two, he mighthave to be Charles' cover-story. They weren't too dissimilar in build,age, or coloring. Charles had a beard by now that sufficiently obscuredhis features, and two years absence should have softened recollectionsof Kennedy. Interrogated, Charles could take refuge in an imitation ofKennedy's lunacy.
"Charles, the one thing I don't get is this Lee dame. She got a spell onher? You don't want to mess with that."
"Listen, Martha, we've _got_ to mess with her. It isn't aspell--exactly. Anyway I know how to take it off and then she'll be onour side."
"Can I set off the explosion? If you let me set off the explosion, I'llquit my bitching."
"We'll see," he said.
She chuckled very faintly in the dark. "Okay," she told him. "If Ican't, I can't."
He thought of being married to a woman who could spot your smallest lieor reservation, and shuddered.
Kennedy was snoring by now and twilight was deepening into blackness.There was a quarter-moon, obscured by over-cast. He hitched along thesand and peered through a chink at a tiny noise. It was the smallscuffling feet of a woods-rat racing through the grass from one morselof food to the next. It never reached it. There was a soft rush of wingsas a great dark owl plummeted to earth and struck talons into the brownfur. The rat squealed its life away while the owl lofted silently to atree branch where it stood on one leg, swaying drunkenly and staringwith huge yellow eyes.
As sudden as that, it'll be, Charles thought abruptly weighted withdespair. A half-crazy kid and yours truly trying to outsmart andout-Tarzan these wild men. If only the little dope would let me take thejeep! But the jeep was out. She rationalized her retention of the powereven after handling iron by persuading herself that she was only actingfor Charles; there was some obscure precedent in a long, memorized poemwhich served her as a text-book of magic. But riding in the jeep was_out_.
By now she should be stringing magic vines across some of the huts andtrails. "They'll see 'em when they get torches and it'll scare 'em. Ofcourse I don't know how to do it right, but they don't know that. It'llslow 'em down. If _she_ comes out of her house--and maybe shewon't--she'll know they don't matter and send the men after us. Butwe'll be on our way. Charles, you _sure_ I can't set off the explosion?Yeah, I guess you are. Maybe I can set off one when we get to NewPortsmouth?"
"If I can possibly arrange it."
She sighed: "I guess that'll have to do."
It was too silent; he couldn't bear it. With feverish haste he uncoveredthe caches of powder and meat. Under the sand was a fat clayey soil. Hedug up hands-full of it, wet it with the only liquid available andworked it into paste. He felt his way to the logs decided on forblasting, dug out a hole at their bases in the clay. After five carefultrips from the powder cache to the hole, the mine was filled. He coveredit with clay and laid on a roof of flat stones from the hearth. Thespark of fire still glowed, and he nursed it with twigs.
She was there, whispering: "Charles?"
"Right here. Everything set?"
"All set. Let's have that explosion."
He took the remaining powder and with minute care, laid a train acrossthe stockade to the mine. He crouched into a ball and flipped a burningtwig onto the black line that crossed the white sand floor.
The blast seemed to wake up the world. Kennedy charged out of sleep,screaming, and a million birds woke with a squawk. Charles was consciousmore of the choking reek than the noise as he scooped up the jerkedvenison and rushed through the ragged gap in the wall. A hand caughthis--a small hand.
"You're groggy," Martha's voice said, sounding far away. "Come on--fast._Man_, that was a great ex-plosion!"
She towed him through the woods and underbrush--fast. As long as he hungon to her he didn't stumble or run into a tree once. Irrationallyembarrassed by his dependence on a child, he tried letting go for ashort time--very short--and was quickly battered into changing his mind.He thought dizzily of the spearmen trying to follow through the dark andcould almost laugh again.
* * * * *
Their trek to the coast was marked by desperate speed. For twenty-fourhours, they stopped only to gnaw at their rations or snatch a drink at astream. Charles kept moving because it was unendurable to let aten-year-old girl exceed him in stamina. Both of them paid terribly forthe murderous pace they kept. The child's face became skull-like and hereyes red; her lips dried and cracked. He gasped at her as they pulledtheir way up a bramble-covered 45-degree slope: "How do you do it? Isn'tthis ever going to end?"
"Ends soon," she croaked at him. "You know we dodged 'em three times?"
He could only shake his head.
She stared at him with burning red eyes. "This ain't hard," she croaked."You do this with a gut-full of poison, _that's_ hard."
"_Did_ you?"
She grinned crookedly and chanted something he did not understand:
"_Nine moons times thirteen is the daughter's age When she drinks the death-cup. Three leagues times three she must race and rage Down hills and up_--"
She added matter-of-factly: "Last year. Prove I have the power of thegoddess. Run, climb, with your guts falling out. This year, starve for aweek and run down a deer of seven points."
He had lost track of days and nights when they stood on the brow of ahill at dawn and looked over the sea. The girl gasped: "'Sall right now._She_ wouldn't let them go on. She's a bitch, but she's no fool." Thechild fell in her tracks. Charles, too tired for panic, s
lept too.
* * * * *
Charles woke with a wonderful smell in his nostrils. He followed ithungrily down the reverse slope of the hill to a grotto.
Martha was crouched over a fire on which rocks were heating. Beside itwas a bark pot smeared with clay. As he watched, she lifted a red-hotrock with two green sticks and rolled it into the pot. It boiled up andcontinued to boil for an astonishing number of minutes. That was thesource of the smell.
"Breakfast?" he asked unbelievingly.
"Rabbit stew," she said. "Plenty of runways, plenty of bark, plenty ofgreen branches. I made snares. Two tough old bucks cooking in there foran hour."
They chewed the meat from the bones in silence. She said at last: "Wecan't settle down here. Too near to the coast. And if we move furtherinland, there's _her_. And others. I been thinking." She spat a stringof tough meat out. "There's England. Work our way around the coast. Makea raft or steal a canoe and cross the water. _Then_ we could settledown. You can't have me for three times thirteen moons yet or I'd losethe power. But I guess we can wait. I heard about England and theEnglish. They have no hearts left. We can take as many slaves as wewant. They cry a lot but they don't fight. And none of their women hasthe power." She looked up anxiously. "You wouldn't want one of theirwomen, would you? Not if you could have somebody with the power just bywaiting for her?"
He looked down the hill and said slowly: "You know that's not what I hadin mind, Martha. I have my own place with people far away. I want to getback there. I thought--I thought you'd like it too." Her face twisted.He couldn't bear to go on, not in words. "Look into my mind, Martha," hesaid. "Maybe you'll see what it means to me."
She stared long and deep. At last she rose, her face inscrutable, andspat into the fire. "Think I saved you for that?" she asked. "And for_her_? Not me. Save yourself from now on, mister. I'm going to beat myway south around the coast. England for me, and I don't want any part ofyou."
She strode off down the hill, gaunt and ragged, but with arrogance inher swinging, space-eating gait. Charles sat looking after her,stupefied, until she had melted into the underbrush. "Think I saved youfor that? And for _her_?" She'd made some kind of mistake. He got upstiffly and ran after her, but he could not pick up an inch of herwoods-wise trail. Charles slowly climbed to the grotto again and sat inits shelter.
He spent the morning trying to concoct simple springs out of bark stripsand whippy branches. He got nowhere. The branches broke or wouldn't bendfar enough. The bark shredded, or wouldn't hold a knot. Without metal,he couldn't shape the trigger to fit the bow so that it would be bothsensitive and reliable.
At noon he drank enormously from a spring and looked morosely for plantsthat might be edible. He decided on something with a bulbous, onion-likeroot. For a couple of hours after that he propped rocks on sticks hereand there. When he stepped back and surveyed them, he decided that anyrabbit he caught with them would be, even for a rabbit, feeble-minded.He could think of nothing else to do.
First he felt a slight intestinal qualm and then a far from slightnausea. Then the root he had eaten took over with drastic thoroughness.He collapsed, retching, and only after the first spasms had passed washe able to crawl to the grotto. The shelter it offered was mostlypsychological, but he had need of that. Under the ancient, mossy stones,he raved with delirium until dark.
Sometimes he was back in Syndic Territory, Charles Orsino of thetwo-goal handicap and the flashing smile. Sometimes he was back in thestinking blockhouse with Kennedy spinning interminable, excruciatinglyboring strands of iridescent logic. Sometimes he was back in thepsychology laboratory with the pendulum beating, the light blinking, thebell ringing and sense-impressions flooding him and drowning him withlies. Sometimes he raced in panic down the streets of New Portsmouthwith sweatered Guardsmen pounding after him, their knives flashing fire.
But at last he was in the grotto again, with Martha sponging his headand cursing him in a low, fluent undertone for being seven times sevenkinds of fool.
She said tartly as recognition came into his eyes: "Yes, for the fifthtime, I'm back. I should be making my way to England and a band of myown, but I'm back and I don't know why. I heard you in pain and Ithought it served you right for not knowing deathroot when you see it,but I turned around and came back."
"Don't go," he said hoarsely.
She held a bark cup to his lips and made him choke down some nauseatingbrew. "Don't worry," she told him bitterly. "I won't go. I'll doeverything you want, which shows that I'm as big a fool as you are, orbigger because I know better. I'll help you find her and take the spelloff her. And may the goddess help me because I can't help myself."
* * * * *
"... things like sawed tree-trunks, shells you call them ... a pile ofthem ... he looks at them and he thinks they're going bad and they oughtto be used soon ... under a wooden roof they are ... a thin man withdeath on his face and hate in his heart ... he wears blue and gold ...he sticks the gold, you call a coat's wrist the cuff, he sticks the cuffunder the nose of a fellow and yells his hate out and the fellow feelsready to strangle on blood ... it's about a boat that sank ... thisfellow, he's a fat little man and he kills and kills, he'd kill the manif he could...."
A picket boat steamed by the coast twice a day, north after dawn andsouth before sunset. They had to watch out for it; it swept the coastwith powerful glasses.
"... it's the man with the bellyache again but now he's sleepy ... he'scursing the skipper ... sure there's nothing on the coast to troubleus ... eight good men aboard and that one bastard of a skipper...."
Sometimes it jumped erratically, like an optical lever disturbed by theweight of a hair.
"... board over the door painted with a circle, a zig-zag on its side,an up-and-down line ... they call it office of intelligent navels ...the lumber camp ... machine goes chug-rip, chug-rip ... and the placewhere they cut metal like wood on machines that spin around ... adeathly-sick little fellow loaded down and chained ... fell on hisface, he can't get up, his bowels are water, his muscles are stiff, likedry branches and he's afraid ... they curse him, they beat him, theytake him to a machine that spins ... _they_ ... _they_--_they_--"
She sat bolt upright, screaming. Her eyes didn't see Charles. He drewback one hand and slammed it across her cheek in a slap thatreverberated like a pistol shot. Her head rocked to the blow and hereyes snapped back from infinity-focus.
She never told Charles what they had done to the sick slave in themachine shop, and he never asked her.
Without writing equipment, for crutches, Charles doubted profoundly thathe'd be able to hang onto any of the material she supplied. Hesurprised himself; his memory developed with exercise.
The shadowy ranks of the New Portsmouth personnel became solider dailyin his mind; the chronically-fatigued ordnance-man whose mainspring wasto get by with the smallest possible effort; the sex-obsessed little manin Intelligence who lived only for the brothels where he selected olderwomen--women who looked like his mother; the human weasel in BuShips whowas impotent in bed and a lacerating tyrant in the office; the admiralwho knew he was dying and hated his juniors proportionately to theiryouth and health.
And--
"... this woman of yours ... she ain't at home there ... she ain'tat ... at home ... _anywhere_. ... the fat man, the one that kills,he's talking to her but she isn't ... yes she is ... no she isn't--she'sanswering him, talking about over-the-sea...."
"Lee Falcaro," Charles whispered. "Lee Bennet."
The trance-frozen face didn't change; the eerie whisper went on withoutinterruption: "... Lee Bennet on her lips, Lee Falcaro down deep in herguts ... and the face of Charles Orsino down there too...."
An unexpected pang went through him.
He sorted and classified endlessly what he had learned. He formed andrejected a dozen plans. At last there was one he could not reject.
The Syndic Page 14
