Starship Home

by Morphett, Tony

  Meg thought this might be a good opportunity to get them on side. She would explain to them how civilized people went about things and then these savages would be shamed into helping her to escape. She stopped struggling. Slowly and carefully they allowed her to sit up, while standing poised to grab her should she try to run again.

  ‘Men and women,’ Meg explained carefully, ‘are equal before the law. For a marriage to take place, both parties have to agree to it. Sometimes,’ she said, in order to indicate how free a society she came from, ‘people live together first to see if they suit one another. Then they marry or not, depending on whether they love each other.’

  The Trollwives looked at each other, but because of the veils, Meg could not read their expressions. Had she been able to see through their veils she would have been surprised to find that their faces all wore expressions of horror and disgust.

  ‘And how do they know that they love one another?’ Ulf’s wife inquired gently.

  ‘They feel it,’ said Meg. ‘It’s a mutual feeling. You just want to be with that person. You understand?’

  The Trollwives nodded. They understood perfectly. ‘Lust,’ said Ulf’s wife. ‘She means lust.’

  ‘I mean nothing of the sort!’ said Meg.

  ‘What happens when the lust fades?’ asked one of the older women.

  ‘If people don’t love each other, and the word is love, then they get divorced. The marriage is dissolved.’

  ‘A man can desert his wife when his lust fades? And take a new woman? Until his lust for her also fades? And so on and on? Again and again?’ Ulf’s wife sounded as if she could not believe what she was hearing.

  ‘Well a woman can get divorced too you know,’ Meg answered. ‘It cuts both ways…’ But her explanation was cut short. The Trollwives had surrounded her, and were patting her shoulders, and cooing sympathetically. They were so sad for her, they told her, that she had grown up in such a barbarous place where women had so few rights, where there was no legal protection for women from the fickle nature of men’s lust, where such a savage custom as divorce could be used by men to oppress women. They told her that she could relax now, that she would be safe in the Duchy of the Trolls, safe from male oppression here in the civilized world.

  Meg sat wondering how her explanation had gone wrong. Perhaps, she thought, words had radically changed their meanings in the past 90 years. She and the Trollwives all spoke English. They just did not seem to be able to communicate with one another.

  Meanwhile, on the main screen of the starship’s bridge, a three-dimensional diagram of a Slarnstaff was slowly revolving. ‘Remember,’ Zachary was saying, ‘it’s the blue button that stuns. Don’t touch any other button, you’re likely to fry them or blow them away.’

  ‘What if our lives are in danger?’ Harold said.

  ‘Stunning’ll take care of it.’

  ‘But…’ said Harold. Harold’s teachers’ hearts sank when Harold said but. It was one of his favorite words.

  ‘But nothing. Stunning will take care of it.’ Zachary was having a hard time getting a very simple concept through to Harold. ‘Today, Harold, you will bring your ears and leave your brain at home, do you understand me?’

  ‘No,’ said Harold.

  ‘Your brain, Harold,’ said Zachary, slowly and firmly, ‘suffers from a disease called intelligence. The symptom of the Intelligence Disease is that you always question my orders. So that we won’t be bothered by an outbreak of the Intelligence Disease today, you will leave your brain at home. If you understand me say durr.’

  To Zoe’s amazement, Harold stopped arguing and grinned. ‘Durr,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve got the makings of a very fine private soldier,’ Zachary said, and hefted his Slarnstaff. ‘Now let’s go.’

  48: THE WEDDING

  The Troll men-at-arms had been burnishing their armor and shining their leather since the Don had ridden back with the captive Meg on his saddle bow. Training had been abandoned for the day, and everyone was to be on hand for the wedding except for a skeleton watch on the roof. During the nuptial mass itself even the roof watch would be allowed to descend to the hall to take part, for the wedding of a Don was a great event in the life of the Duchy. Normally the preparations would go on for weeks in advance, but on this occasion, since Don Robert had only recently emerged from mourning for his first wife and their son, both dead of the fluenza epidemic which had ravaged the Duchy a little more than a year before, the ceremony was to be a quiet one.

  As the Troll men-at-arms burnished armor and polished leather and carefully checked blades for any minute rust spots which may have developed since that morning, they talked about Ducal weddings in the past.

  ‘The last Don’s wedding, the wedding of this Don’s elder brother, the Nameless One, now that was a wedding,’ a grizzled old man-at-arms was telling some of the younger men, who had been only children at the time. ‘Killed his own best man in a duel at the wedding feast for looking too closely at the bride’s forehead … beautiful forehead she had, a Worth she was before she married and the Worth women was always noted for the beauty of their foreheads. And the bride herself dead just a few years later giving birth to young Rocky.’

  ‘It was after that he went mad?’ said the youngest man-at-arms.

  ‘He was mad before that, boy, and bad as well,’ said the old man-at-arms. ‘Now get on with it, I want to see my face in that boot before you’re finished.’

  As the preparations advanced, Father John went to the women’s quarters to talk to the bride. Ten minutes later he knocked to be let out of the women’s quarters again, and he seemed a worried man as he went to the Don, who, now resplendent in his best black leather, was in the hall making a personal inspection of the wedding preparations.

  ‘My lord,’ Father John began, ‘there seems to be a problem.’

  ‘No,’ the Don said carefully, so that there should be no misunderstanding, ‘there is not.’

  When the Don spoke carefully so that there should be no misunderstanding, he sounded dangerous. This was because at these times he was very dangerous indeed. The priest, who was fully aware of this, nevertheless went on. ‘The bride won’t give her consent,’ he said.

  The Don could not see how this was logically possible. ‘But once a bride has been stolen according to traditional practice,’ he pointed out, ‘she automatically gives her consent.’

  ‘The Lady Henderson,’ said Father John carefully, for he too spoke in this way when he wished there to be no misunderstanding as to his meaning, ‘does not seem to recognize our customs in this matter.’

  The Don smiled with his lips but not his eyes. ‘Has it been explained to the Lady Henderson that I could have any bride that I wanted? That not a day passes but someone comes here wanting me to marry their daughter? That I am said to be handsome, the possessor of the finest set of calves in the region, the best horseman in the Duchy and the most dangerous swordsman ever to draw blade?’ The Don was puzzled. No one had ever denied these things. What did he have to do or be to win this woman?

  ‘All this has been explained to the Lady Henderson,’ Father John replied, ‘but she says she is,’ and here he dropped his voice as if uttering an obscenity, ‘she says that she is her own woman. Whatever that expression may mean,’ he added hastily.

  ‘But she’s nothing of the sort,’ the Don said, thinking the while that the Lady Henderson must come from a very strange place indeed, ‘for in the absence of her father and brothers, she was legally owned by Zachary. We established that, she agreed herself that this was the case. I stole her from Zachary, and so therefore, according to both law and reason, she’s legally owned by me.’

  ‘She says that she won’t give her consent during the marriage service,’ said Father John.

  ‘She won’t say the “I will”,’ the Don translated.

  The priest nodded.

  The Don paused in thought for a moment and then smiled as he saw the rational solution. ‘Then I’ll say
it for both of us.’

  ‘I think, my lord, that that would be a most doubtful expedient.’

  The Don thought about it some more. He had never struck a case like this before. ‘I am the Law, correct?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘As the Law, I declare that the Lady Henderson and I are married. Since we are now married, as her husband according to civil law I can give consent on her behalf. Now, Father John, you will read the wedding service for me and my wife!’ The Don smiled triumphantly. He had thought his way through the legal tangle to a perfectly acceptable solution. Striding to the door to the women’s quarters, he struck it three times and shouted, ‘Bring out the bride!’

  A short time later, the guards on the roof were alerted that the wedding was about to begin, and so quit their posts and went down the stairs to the hall. And an even shorter time after that, the school bus emerged from the forest trail and chugged its way uphill toward Trollcastle.

  Bumping around in her seat inside the bus, Zoe was getting worried. ‘What if we’re too late? Maze says that when Trolls kidnap women they marry them straight away. What if we’re too late?’

  Zachary changed gears. ‘I guess if we’re too late to stop the wedding, then we get to throw rice,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not funny, Zachary!’ Zoe expostulated. ‘This isn’t the Dark Ages!’

  Harold looked up toward the castle where saddled horses were hitched to a rail near the gate. ‘It isn’t?’ he asked. ‘Think again.’

  A few moments later, the bus came to a halt near the castle doors. Zachary took the ignition keys, and they all got out, and moved to the big ironbound wooden doors. Zachary pushed. They were barred. He waved the others back, and then, pointing his Slarnstaff, pressed a number of buttons. With a crashing noise the doors disintegrated, their iron bindings clanging to the ground.

  ‘Which buttons did you press?’ Harold asked excitedly.

  ‘None of your business,’ Zachary said. ‘Guinevere only told me because I’m so smart,’ he added, as he led the way in across the wreckage of the doors and into the castle.

  ‘Can’t be the red one, that’s flame, can’t be the white, that’s light,’ Harold was saying to himself.

  ‘It’s a combination and don’t experiment,’ Zachary answered as they headed for the hall.

  Inside the hall, Meg stood, bound and gagged with strips of delustered white satin, and supported on each side by a Trollwife. Alongside her on her right was the Don in shining black leather and steel, and on his right was his best man Ulf. Father John stood before them. ‘Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love honor and keep him,’ he was saying, ‘in sickness and in health; and forsaking all other keep thee only unto him as long as ye both shall live?’

  ‘Ahl see tascist tig dead tirst,’ Meg said through her delustered satin gag.

  ‘I consent on my dear wife’s behalf,’ the Don said.

  The Trollwives were weeping. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ said one, and ‘so romantic,’ said another.

  ‘Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?’ intoned Father John at which point there was a shattering crash, and the doors at the back of the hall disintegrated. Harold, Zoe and Zachary walked in, line abreast, Slarnstaffs at the ready, and advanced up the hall between the ranks of Trolls and Trollwives, who stood frozen in silence. Zachary was profoundly grateful that the display of firepower had created a temporary sense of caution among the Trolls.

  When the starship crew reached the stage where the wedding was taking place Zachary pointed his Slarnstaff at a chair. Fire gushed from the flanged end of his Slarnstaff and the chair exploded into flames. Zachary looked at the Don. ‘Give us back Meg or we tear down the castle.’

  The Don paused, but he did not know Zachary well enough to call his bluff. Perhaps this stranger was capable of doing what he said. Perhaps he was not. Perhaps he possessed the will to kill the Don’s people, and perhaps he did not. The Don was a true aristocrat, and identified with his people; they served him and he served them, and he would not gamble with their lives. Better he never marry at all than do so. He nodded to the Trollwives who held Meg. ‘Release her.’ Swiftly the Trollwives untied Meg’s gag and the bonds securing her hands, and then Meg, Zoe and Harold were moving swiftly back down the hall, with Zachary moving behind them, walking backwards, watching their backs.

  As the starship party moved from the hall, the Don gestured to his men. It was done with hand signals. Some to control the fire which could spread from the blazing chair, some to go this way, some that. The Troll men-at-arms were running out, the women moving back to their quarters.

  As the starship crew emerged from the castle, they saw to their horror that Troll men-at-arms had reached the school bus before them. One was leaping from the bus’s doorway and others were behind the bus, pushing. The bus was rolling downhill as the starship crew ran for it. By the time they reached it, it was already travelling too fast for them to get aboard.

  ‘How come they know about handbrakes?’ howled an agonized Zachary.

  They grouped, Meg in the centre, the other three around her, Slarnstaffs at the ready. The Don was walking out of the castle toward them, crunching his way over the wreckage of his castle doors. ‘It’s a long way home,’ the Don said. ‘And anything could happen on the road. Why don’t we talk?’

  There was a moment’s silence, then Meg suddenly broke from the circle, and, holding her wedding skirts in one hand, was running for the horses tethered near the castle gate. She untied one, her left foot was in the stirrup, she turned the horse as she mounted, and now she was untying the others. Controlling her horse with her thighs, reaching for the reins with one hand and ripping away her Troll bride’s veil with the other, she yelled ‘Come on!’, and Zoe, Harold and Zachary were running toward her, covering their retreat with their Slarnstaffs.

  The Don stood, stilled with admiration for Meg. ‘What a woman,’ he was saying, as his men looked to him for orders. ‘What a wife she’ll make,’ he said to himself, as Zoe, Harold and Zachary scrambled awkwardly onto horses, and Meg drove off the remainder of them with wild cries. ‘What a wife for a Don, what a mother for his sons,’ the Don said as he watched the starship people ride away.

  ‘They’ve shamed you,’ said a voice in his ear. The Don turned to find Marlowe the village sorcerer standing behind him, red glinting through the dark glass on one side of his wraparound shades. ‘They’ve shamed you in front of your men. Get rid of them. Now.’

  ‘Sorcerer? You tempt me to violence against my chosen bride?’

  ‘They’re dangerous. They’ll bring the Slarn, they’ll use their fire weapons to help the Sullivans. Get rid of them now. Slay them.’

  ‘You tempt me to murder the woman I love?’ The Don’s face went cold. ‘A hanging offence. Court is in session, the verdict is guilty, the punishment death.’ He paused, as Marlowe looked round wildly for an avenue of escape. ‘However, Marlowe, our families have long helped one another. In view of that, your punishment is commuted to banishment from my sight. Now leave. While you’re still a guest. And let me not see you from this day on.’

  At this, Marlowe turned, and ran from the Don’s presence. He would live. He would find help elsewhere. He could still possess the starship for his own.

  49: CONSULTING THE MENU

  As Marlowe strode away from Trollcastle with the pack containing his journals on his back, the Don stood on the stage of the hall looking at the charred remains of the chair on which Zachary had demonstrated the Slarnstaff’s firepower. The Don’s pensive gaze shifted from the chair to the doorway at the end of the hall, where Troll carpenters were already clearing away the wreckage of the doors preparatory to replacing them. Work had also begun on the main doors to the castle, and the sounds of sawing and hammering and the smells of fresh sawdust and heated iron drifted into the hall. The Don now turned his gaze toward Ulf and Father John. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘A coward’s weapon,’ Ulf said. ‘Like bow and arrow. Li
ke the guns the Slarn put the Forbid on. A weapon where a coward can stand back and kill his enemy at a distance. Not a man’s weapon like a blade, where you must go in close and feel your enemy’s dying breath in your face.’

  The Don nodded and looked at Father John. The priest paused before answering. ‘A just war may be fought only by just means.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Used against soldiers, not civilians, used in battle, not simply for random destruction, such a weapon may, and I repeat may, be a just means for pursuing a just war.’ He smiled. ‘And if you want those words “may be” to become an “is”, you must allow me to consult my bishop.’

  The Don was appalled. ‘Why would I use such a weapon against civilians? Why would I use it for random destruction?’ He was puzzled and slightly sickened by the concepts.

  ‘A century ago … before the Slarn came … such weapons were used in such ways.’ Father John gestured at the chair, the scent of burned wood and leather strong in his nostrils.

  ‘They must have had no Code,’ said the Don. ‘Like Looters.’

  ‘Coward’s weapons,’ assented Ulf.

  The Don ran his hand over the charred surface of the chair. ‘But a coward’s weapon which could end the threat of Sullivan invasion, impose peace on South Australia, roll back the King of Vic’s incursions…’

  Ulf was beginning to see the possibilities. ‘Whole of Auz maybe. The world…’

  ‘You crazy?’ The Don spoke sharply. Ulf had gone from “coward’s weapon” to a dream of world conquest in two easy leaps.

  ‘If you’re going to use a coward’s weapon, why limit yourself?’

  ‘World conquest’s out of reach, Ulf. We’ve got no gas ships, no flyplanes.’ He paused. ‘My grandsons maybe.’ He looked at the burned chair again. ‘Tell them to leave the chair here. To remind us of … possibilities. Mmmm?’ He looked at Father John. ‘Talk to the bishop. Under seal of the confessional.’

  ‘Confessional? I don’t understand.’

  The Don sometimes despaired of ever getting his chaplain to think like a soldier. ‘The very knowledge that these weapons exist is itself a military secret. If the Sullivans, or the Vics knew, they’d invade in force. You know how the Sullivan Himself thinks. He’d sacrifice a hundred men to get one of those things. And if he got one…?’ he let the question hang in the air. ‘So you ask your bishop if it’s a just means of war, but you ask him under seal of the confessional so it stays our secret. Nod if you understand.’