The Asutra

by Jack Vance

  In calmness and gravity Etzwane obeyed as best he could. Polovits watched with grim intentness, but could find no fault with the efforts. At last he turned and strode away. With a faint smile on his face, Etzwane returned to Kretzel's little office and practiced the nineteen cantos he already knew and learned the melody to cantos Twenty and Twenty-one from the reproducing machine. He would discover the semantic significance in due course.

  Etzwane conducted himself with care, but Polovits was unrelenting. Etzwane's patience wore thin, and he decided to take positive action. Polovits, by some uncanny means, divined the fact of the decision and thrust his angular old face close to Etzwane's. "A dozen men have thought to best me, and can you guess where they lie at this moment? In the great hole. I know tricks you never heard of! I'm just waiting for a single insubordinate move, then you will learn the folly of proud attitudes on this sad world Kahei."

  Etzwane had no choice but hypocrisy. He said politely, "I'm sorry if I have given offense; I want only to remain inconspicuous. Needless to say, I am not here by my own choice."

  "You waste my time with your witticisms," bawled Polovits. "I intend to hear no more! " He strode away, and Etzwane went to practice the Song.

  Kretzel inquired as to his lack of zest, and Etzwane explained that Polovits was about to take his life. Kretzel gave a whinny of shrill laughter. "That spleenful little dingbat; he's not worth the rumble of an ahulph's gut! He won't give you to death, because he's afraid to speak a lie. Do you think the Ka are fools? Come, I will teach you Canto 2023, wherein the stave-cutters kill a stone-roller because he dented their moss. Then you need only play the eleventh phrase should Polovits so much as raise a finger. Better! Tell old Polovits that you are rehearsing the Canto of Open Inspection, and that you consider his conduct slack. To work. Polovits-is of no more consequence than a bad smell."

  "Gastel Etzwane," said Polovits, during the morning calisthenics. "You move with the grace and agility of a pregnant grampus. I cannot accept those kneebends as accomplished facts. Has your well-known musical virtuosity rendered you absentminded? Well, then, answer! I count your silence an insolence. How long must I suffer your slights?"

  "Not long at all," said Etzwane. "Yonder walks a Monitor; summon him. By chance I have here my pipes and I will play the Canto of Open Inspection, and we shall have justice."

  Polovits' eyes seemed to burn red. His mouth slowly opened, then snapped shut. He swung around and made as if to summon the Ka. As if by great effort he restrained himself. "So then: he takes you and half this band of club-footed cretins to the hole; how do I gain? I only must start again with a group as bad. We are wasting time! Back to the calisthenics; once again the kneebends. Smartly now! " But Polovits spoke somewhat pensively and refused to meet Etzwane's gaze.

  Kretzel asked Etzwane, "How is Polovits now?"

  "He is a changed man," said Etzwane. "His tirades have ended, and likewise his tantrums; he is now as meek as a grass-tit, and the drills are almost a pleasure."

  Kretzel was silent and Etzwane once again took up the pipes. He noticed a tear rolling down the brown folds of Kretzel's cheek, and lowered the pipes. "Has something occurred to distress you?"

  Kretzel rubbed at her face. "I never think of home; I would long since have been dead had I mourned. But one word stirred a memory and brought it to life; and I thought of the meadows above the Elshuka Pond where my family held a steading. The grass was high, and when I was a little girl I worked long burrows through the grass and surprised two tits at their nesting… One day I burrowed a long tunnel through the grass. When it broke open I looked up into the face of Molsk the Man-taker. He took me away in a sack and I never again saw the Elshuka Pond… I have no great time to live. They will mix my bones into this sour black soil, when I would once again be home in the sunlight."

  Etzwane blew a pensive tune on the pipes. "Were many slaves on Kahei when you came?"

  "We were among the first. They used us to build their Roguskhoi. I evaded the worst of it when I learned the Song. But the others are gone, save a few. Old Polovits, for one."

  "And in all this time has no one escaped?"

  " 'Escaped'? To where? The world is a prison! "

  "I could take pleasure in doing general harm, if I were able."

  Kretzel gave an indifferent shrug. "Once I felt the same way, but now-I have played the Great Song too many times. I feel almost a Ka."

  Etzwane recalled the occasion at Shagfe when the Ka captive had destroyed Hozman Sore-throat's asutra. What had triggered this spasm of violence? If all the Ka of Kahei could feel the same impulse, there would be no more asutra. Etzwane became conscious of how little he in fact knew of the Ka, of their way of life, their innate character. He put questions to Kretzel, who at once became cross and advised that he apply himself to the Great Song.

  Etzwane said, "I know twenty-two cantos; there are more than fourteen thousand yet to be learned; I will be an old man before my questions are answered."

  "And I will be dead," snapped Kretzel. "So then, attend to the mechanism; hear the double quaver at the end of the second phrase. This is a common device and signifies what is called 'vehement assertion.' The Ka are a brave and desperate people; their history is a series of tragic plights, and the double quaver expresses this mood, the challenge flung into the face of destiny."

  Polovits, the furious old fighting-cock, with startling abruptness had become a surly introvert, who gave minimum effort to the drills. The tension created by his old antagonism had collapsed; the drills became periods of droning boredom.

  The mood, for Etzwane, infected every aspect of existence; he began to feel a disassociation, a sense of existence on two levels, inner and outer, and his mind, retreating into a subjective middle distance, watched the work of his body without interest or participation.

  What of the Great Song? Each day Etzwane dutifully went to Kretzel. He played the cantos and memorized the significances, but the project began to loom vast and futile. He could learn the fourteen thousand cantos, and so become another Kretzel… Etzwane became wrathful, outraged by his own passivity. "I defeated the Roguskhoi! I used my energy and intellect! I refused to submit! I must use these same resources to enforce my terms upon destiny! "

  So he told himself, and, spiritually regenerated, plotted revolt, sabotage, a guerrilla operation, kidnap and holding of hostages, the capture of the bronze disk-ship beside the compound, signals and communications… Each of his schemes foundered on the same reef: impracticality. In frustration he thought to organize a team of kindred spirits, but encountered a discouraging lack of zest. Except in one person, a gaunt and brooding man from the Saprovno district who used the name Shapan, from a weed with tenacious tendrils and fish-hook barbs. Shapan seemed interested in Etzwane's views, and Etzwane began to feel that he had encountered an ally until one day Kretzel casually identified him as the most notorious provocateur of the camp. "He's been the death of a dozen men. He urges them into illicit conduct, then notifies the Ka, and to what purpose other than sheer perversity I cannot fathom, for he has profited not a whit."

  Etzwane became first furious, then disgusted with himself, then sardonically apathetic. Shapan seemed eager to formulate new plots, but Etzwane feigned perplexity.

  A clanging of gongs awoke the slaves while darkness still pressed dank and heavy upon the camp. There were flutings and the thud of running feet; emergency of some sort was afoot. From the lumpy cupola atop the garage sounded a wild ululation: the _ general alarm. The slaves ran forth to find a transport ship at rest in the exercise yard. The slaves stood back, murmuring doubts and speculations.

  From the ship came a dozen Ka, asutra clutching their necks. Etzwane sensed haste in their conduct. Ka song-speech, in the "referential " First Style, fluted across the compound. Again the ululating alarm sounded; the corporals ran forth and ordered their platoons; those who had trained with weapons were marched to the transport ship and up into a long, dim hold. The deck was dirty and layered with fil
th; the air carried an abominable stench. The slaves stood crowded together, one man's chin on another man's % shoulder, and the odor of sweating bodies added a sweet-sour overtone to the reek.

  The hulk lurched and moved; the slaves held to stanchions or braced against the hull, or each other; there was no room to fall. Some became sick and commenced a lugubrious groaning; a few began to yell in anger and panic, but were silenced by blows. The cries were muffled; the groaning gradually subsided.

  An hour, or perhaps two, the ship moved, then Jarred to the ground. The engines died; the ship was at rest. With open air so near at hand, the slaves became desperate and began to pound on the hull and to shout, "Out, out, out…"

  The hatch opened, admitting a gust of cold wind. The slaves cringed back involuntarily. A voice called, "Everyone outside, in good order. Danger is at hand; the time has come."

  The slaves hunched out into blowing darkness. A pallid light winked off to the right; a voice called, "March ahead, toward the light. Stay in line; do not straggle to either side."

  The miserable men stirred; without any particular volition they found themselves trudging along a soft, somewhat spongy surface toward the light. The wind blew steadily, driving a thin, cold rain. Etzwane felt like a man in a terrifying dream, from which he knew he must awake.

  The column came to halt before a low structure. After a wait of a minute or two, it continued forward, down a ramp into an underground hall, dimly illuminated. Drenched and shivering, the slave warriors stood pressed together, vapor rising fetid from their garments. At the far end sounded the fluting of a Ka; the creature mounted a bench, where he was joined by an old man, crooked of body, with extraordinarily long arms and legs.

  The Ka produced a set of First Style flutings; the old man spoke, his mouth a black gap at the back of his whiskers. "I give you the meanings. The enemy has come in a spaceship. They have put down their forts; once again they intend to sweep across Kahei. All the wise helpers they will kill. " He paused to listen to the Ka, and Etzwane wondered who were the "wise help- ere. " Asutra? The old man spoke again. 'The Ka will fight, and you will fight with the Ka, who are your dominants. So you will be joined to the Song."

  The old man listened, but the Ka had no more to say, and the old man spoke alone. "Look about you now, into each other's faces, because grim events are in the offing and many a man will never see another day. Those who die, how will they be remembered? Not in name nor in semblance, but by their desperate courage. A canto will tell how they went forth in lizard-cars and slid across the dark dawn to measure themselves against the enemy."

  Again the Ka fluted; the old man listened and translated. 'The tactics are simple. In the lizard-cars you are nameless destroyers, the simple essence of desperate rage. Let them fear you! What remains to you except ferocity? When you go, go only forward! The enemy holds the north moor; his forts control the sky. We strike from the ground- "

  Etzwane cried out from the dark: "Who is this 'enemy'? They are men like ourselves! Should men kill men in aid of the asutra?"

  The old man craned his neck. The Ka fluted; the old man played phrases on his double-pipes, then called to the warriors, "I know nothing, so ask no questions; I cannot answer. The enemy is the enemy, no matter what his guise. Go forth, destroy! These are the words of the Ka. My own words are these: good luck to all of you. It is an ill business to die so far from Durdane, but die we must, and why not gallantly?"

  Another voice, hoarse and mocking, called out, "Gallantly indeed we will die, and you can assure the Ka of so much; they have not brought us this far for nothing. " A light flashed red at the end of the chamber. "Follow the light; step forward then! "

  Men milled and circled, none willing to be first. The Ka fluted; the old man cried, "Out into the passage; go where the red lamp beckons! "

  The men surged into a whitewashed tunnel and through a narrow portal at the end; here each man was gripped between two Ka while a third stuck a tube into his mouth and forced a gout of acrid liquid down his throat.

  Coughing, cursing, spitting, the men stumbled out upon a pavement and into the watery gray light of dawn. To either side lizard-cars stood in ranks. The men came slowly forward, and their corporals reached forth and turned them aside, toward a lizard-car. "In you go," Polovits told Etzwane in a toneless voice. "Drive north, over the rise. The torpedo tubes are armed; torpedo the forts, destroy the enemy."

  Etzwane slid into the car; the lid slammed down upon him. He touched the thrust pedal; the car rumbled and hissed and slid off across the pavement and out upon the moor.

  Ingenious and dangerous were the lizard-cars: not two feet high, supple and lithe to cling to the contours of the ground. Energy packs were carried in the tail; Etzwane knew nothing of the vehicle's range, but at the training camp they were refueled but seldom. Three torpedo tubes aimed directly forward; the dorsal surface supported a squat, swivel-mounted energy gun. The cars slid on nodes of compression, and in favorable circumstances moved with darting rapidity.

  Etzwane drove north up a slope padded with black velvet moss. To either side slid other lizard-cars, some ahead and some behind. The potion which had been forced down his throat now began to take effect: Etzwane felt a grim elation, a sensation of power and invulnerability.

  He came up over the roll of the slope and retarded the speed-lever. The control failed to answer. No matter-or so his drugged mind assured him; forward and full speed; what other speed or direction was necessary?… He had been tricked. The knowledge eroded his drug-induced élan. He felt sudden prickles of anger. Not enough that they send him forth against "enemies " he had never known! They also must ensure that he go to his death in haste!

  A wide valley spread before him. Two miles away he saw a small, shallow lake, and nearby three black spaceships. Lake and spaceships were surrounded by a ring of twenty squat black cones: evidently the forts which the slave warriors had been commanded to attack.

  Over the hill came the lizard-cars, one hundred and forty in number, and none could be stopped. One of the cars in front of Etzwane swung about in a great semicircle, and started back the way it had come, the man within waving, gesticulating, pointing. Etzwane and his rancor needed no further stimulus; he turned his own car about and drove back toward the base, yelling in crazy glee out the ventilation ports. One by one the other cars became infected; they veered and darted back the way they had come. On the ridge above crouched four mobile forts, observers within. These forts now slid forward, red lights flashing. Etzwane brought his torpedo sight to bear. He nudged the trigger and one of the forts spun up into the air like a fish breaking water, to crash back down on its side. The other forts opened fire; three lizard-cars became puddles of molten metal, but simultaneously the forts were struck and broken. From two of these clambered Ka, to run across the moor with great striding leaps; after them slid the lizard-cars, harrying, swerving, circling, and finally running down the Ka.

  Etzwane waved his arm and bawled out the ventilation ports: 'To the base; to the base! "

  Over the hill raced the lizard-cars. Instantly the weapon emplacements beamed glaring red rays of warning. "Spread apart! " yelled Etzwane. He signaled with his hands, but none heeded. He aimed his torpedo tube and fired; one of the emplacements erupted. The remaining fortifications spat forth lances of energy, burning the lizard-cars at a touch, but other torpedoes struck home. In five seconds half the lizard-cars had become cinders, but the weapons were silenced, and the surviving lizard-cars raced back to the base unopposed. Someone fired a torpedo into the subterranean garage and the entire hill exploded. Turf, concrete, dismembered torsos, miscellaneity spurted high in the air and settled.

  The base was a silent crater. The problem now was halting the lizard-cars. Etzwane experimented with the various controls, to no avail. He threw open the entry hatch, to actuate a cut-off switch. The motor died, the car slid to a halt. Etzwane jumped out and stood on the black velvet moss. If he were to be killed in the next minute, he would have died exul
tant.

  The other men halted their cars as Etzwane had done and stepped to the ground. Of the hundred and forty who had set forth, half had returned. The drug still worked its effect; faces were flushed, with eyes prominent and brilliant, and each individual's personality seemed more concentrated, more distinct and powerful than before. They guffawed and stamped and recounted their exploits: "-outlaws at last, with our lives not worth a twig – " "So, then: it's over the hills; into the far places! Let them follow if they dare! " "Food? Of course there's food! We'll rob the Ka! " "-vengeance! They won't accept our triumph; they'll drop down from the skies- "

  Etzwane spoke: "A moment; listen to me! Over the hill are the black spaceships. The crews are men like ourselves, from an unknown world. Why should we not go to greet them like friends and trust in their goodwill? We have nothing to lose."

  A brawny, black-bearded man known to Etzwane only as Korba, demanded, "How do you know there are men aboard these ships?"

  "I saw a similar ship broken up," said Etzwane. "The bodies of men were expelled. In any event, let us reconnoiter; we have nothing to lose."

  "Correct," declared Korba. "We live now from minute to minute."

  "One further matter," said Etzwane. "It is important that we act as a group, not a gang of wild men. We need a leader, to coordinate our actions. What of Korba here? Korba, will you undertake to be our leader?"

  Korba pulled at his black beard. "No, not I. You asserted the need and you are the man for the job. What is your name then?"

  "I am Gastel Etzwane, I will take the responsibility unless someone objects."

  No one spoke.

  "Very well," said Etzwane. "First, let us repair the cars, so that we may manage them more easily."