Tama Princes of Mercury

by Terry Pratchett

  And suddenlysave for the belt of electronic weapons1 saw him as a pirate captain of the Spanish Main, regarding a prisoner whom he soon would tire of goading and put to death.

  Was that to be my allotted portion? Dorrek said stolidly, "You are left to help me, big man of Earth. I not kill you."

  "Thanks," I said. "What are you going to do with me?"

  "Roc dead." His smile widened. "I lead the Cold Country now. They start the war too soon. I tell them that just now.

  We go back to the Dark Mountains, near my country. I want all my men, my brues. And all my weapons ready.

  You understand? We attack again. I talk the English tongue not too bad?" He came and sat cross-legged beside me. Wild thoughts swept me. Where was Rowena? Was she unharmed? I thought of escaping. Sitting as I was so close to him, if I were not so securely tied I could snatch one of those weapons from his belt. Or smash his wide flabby face with a blow of my fist, or crush his thick chest with my encircling grip. I was nearly his own giant size. And no Mercurian in strength and agility could match an Earthman. Wild thoughts He repeated, "I speak English not too bad?" I summoned my wits and smiled back at him. "No. You speak all right."

  "I speak better soon. You will teach me, when I master of the Light Country." That brought a measure of relief. He had use for me; and it was obvious I could play on it.

  "That should not be hard, Dorrek."

  "No. The Mercurian, he learn quick. The memory takes words and holds them. I want your languagemaster it. I have great plans. We build big racegiant people on Mercury. I killwhen I am masterthe little flying virgins. No good. Rebellious, much trouble always. And little Light Country men, like the brother of Tama. He called Toh. You know lump"

  "I saw him once on Earth."

  "No good for breed new people. Men like you betterlike meand your women." My heart pounded. "Women who cannot fly and be troublesome?" I ventured.

  "Yes. Earthwomen. I like them much. Women like this Rowena." I held myself expressionless. "You still have her here, Dorrek?"

  "Yes. She here1 never hurt her."

  "Earthwomen are not always easy to manage, Dorrek."

  "This one1 manage her. Besides, she like me. I want my woman yield with love, not fear. Muta beautiful once, but old now. Too much old." I forced a laugh, and he responded to it.

  "Your ideas are reasonable," I agreed. "Make this Earthwoman yield with love, not fear. You can't do that all at once, Dorrek."

  "Not hastemy mind now only on conquest of Mercury." He touched me. "You, Jack. Dean1 make you want to teach me the English without forcing." He was far more clever than he looked, this Dorrek. He shot me a sidewise glance.

  "You want I let you loose? Then you help me?" I fancy he liked me because I was the only man near his own giant size whom he had ever seen.

  He was smiling again. "You can no escape. Roc tried that.

  You saw him fall? You want not death? I loose you a little.

  Free to walk. Do what you likehere among us. I call you friend." Then he was unroping me. Again I had that flood of wild thoughts. I put them asideto start fighting now would only mean death for me, and possibly, Rowena.

  I rolled over to help him untie me.

  "Where is this Earth girl?"

  "A room above. Muta with her." I sat up, rubbing my arms and legs to get the blood back into them. Dorrek watched me; then with a sudden thought, he selected a length of rope.

  "Only a little loose. " Around my ankles he tied the rope so that I could take a short step and no more, and he tied my wrists about a foot apart. I could free myself, I knew. And Dorrek knew it, of course. But it would take some minutes, and I would be under constant observation.

  He commented: "Just so. No sudden idea of flight. You . understand?"

  "Yes." I smiled.

  He watched me as I stood up shakily, stretching my legs until I could walk normally. With the lesser gravity pullit was Mercurian gravity here now1 had to be carefuL Dorrek stood beside me.

  "When you hungry, you tell Muta." He laid his huge hand on my shoulder. "Too much bad, so big men like us not real friends."

  "Call us that, Dorrek."

  "If you real friend, sometime you talk to Rowena. Tell her Dorrek, he great man." I met his steady gaze, and it gave me a shock. There was always a naive earnestness in this burly scoundrel's manner.

  I was shocked to realize now it was largely the limitations of his command of English.

  "You tell her, 'Dorrek he is great man.' " He said it naively enough, but in his gaze I could not miss a hint of irony in the earnestness of his voice half-real, half-assumed. With a shock came the thought that this fellow was only malong fun of me.

  And then I thought that I was mistaken. He added, "You tell Rowenasomeday I kill her and kill you if she find she cannot love me." There was no duplicity in that .speech, I was convinced! He turned and left me without waiting for my answer.

  I was free now to move about the vehicle. As Dorrek passed through the interior doorway, one of his men appeared there and stood watching me. I was free to seek out Rowena. But though I longed to do it at once, caution held me. Dorrek might be listening. A surprised, incautious word from Rowena as I told her of my plan for escapeit was too dangerous a chance. I decided to wait, for a time at least. Until the vehicle landed somewhere, we could not even think of a way out.

  The Mercurian in the doorway was eying me, but he did not speak. I crossed the room with my hobbled steps and stood at the window.

  We were flying at an altitude of a few thousand feet. It was dark, but there was enough light for me to see the landscape beneath. It was changed from the copper uplands of the Light Country to a darker rock, sleek and glistening as though it were largely iron.

  The sky was leaden. But as I gazed, with my eyes growing accustomed to it, there seemed a vague green sheen of radiance mingled with 'the clouds. Green, and occasionally dim shafts of a turgid yellow. The window was open with a small sill, breast-high, on which I leaned. A wind was outside; but I guessed it was only the creation of our forward flight. The night was breathlessoppressive. I thought suddenly of what Guy had told us about the black storms.

  Was this one of them brewing now? I stood there perhaps an hour, watching the dim landscape slipping past; A dark metallic plain fluted with little rifts and gullies. It seemed steadily rising toward us. As the ball slowly turned on its axis, my view spread to the horizon over all its circle. A close upstanding horizon, black against the sky. The plain was gradually breaking into rougher ccnm"try: deeper gullies, round black pitsunfathomable emptiness downward, and little crater holes, like pockmarks.

  For a time it seemed almost a Lunar landscape, as desolate, uninhabited as our frigid Moon. I saw no sign of habitation down here now.

  Then, in a little valley, there seemed a huddled group of mound-shaped huts. But the village was doubtless abandoned; there were no lights, nothing moving.

  We flew steadily onward. Off to one side, diagonally ahead of us against the horizon, I saw a glow of red-yellow light.

  A crater pit, not dead like all the others, but with a fire in its depths. It came into closer view as we passed, a little glowing crater. It seemed almost welcome in the bleak dark desolation. It passed sidewise and went quickly down beneath the rising horizon as we advanced.

  I was aware of the air growing constantly colder. And the night darker. Not so much because of the storm; we were advancing, I knew, into the region of perpetual night. The Sunif there had been no clouds to obscure itwould have been always at or beneath the horizon even at the Water City. And here, already it would have set, never to rise.

  Presently, I saw mountains coming up aheadblack peaks a great line of them stretching like a wall before us. The ball began rising. The mountains loomed higher, closer.

  And then we were over them. I stood amazed, awe-struck.

  There is a terror to darknessthings almost, but not quite, visible. Shining Lunar mountains are bleak and desolate, but the light on
them brings a grandeur to the beholder, rather than a fear. But here beneath me now was a desolation fearsome in the extreme. Black bottomless canyons, incongruously wide for the sharply convex surface of this small planet; canyons with sheer black walls dropping into blackness; peaks rising like pointed needles; open valleys strewn with crags and boulders.

  A ragged, tumbled land, rent and torn by some great cataclysm of nature. Once there may have been fire here; I saw a tremendous upsloping ramp of what might have been congealed lava; a cloven rock peak loomed at its summit.

  We were slamming low, and now the mountains were around us. We swung into a deep black canyon. One of its walls, glistening black, slid past my window hardly more than a hundred feet away. Gazing up, I could see its straight edge against the sky and a towering peak still higher. There seemed a white glow upon the peaksome little light catching its mantle of snow.

  ~ The vehicle turned on its axis. Again I could see ahead up this narrow black canyon and see its floor now, broken and rock-strewn, as we steadily ascended.

  The flight of the ball seemed slowing. Ahead I saw where the canyon narrowed to a mere two hundred feet, like the neck of a bottle, beyond which it opened into a wide bowl enclosed by perpendicular, thousand-foot cliffs. We sailed through the neck, out into the open valley. I saw lights.

  Dorrek's mountain stronghold lay spread here on the valley floor.

  There was a step behind me. I heard a confusion of sound within the vehicle. Tramping feet. Orders. The hiss of the side rocket streamspreparations for landing.

  Dorrek appeared. "We are here. You go abovefriend Jack." I followed him to the small ladder incline which led to the upper tier. It was the single connection between. the two floors of the vehicle. He pushed me. A few steps up, I turned to gaze at him. He was smiling.

  "You stay up there. I have men stand here so you not come down. Windows have bars up there."

  "All right," I said. "Are we landing now?"

  "Yes. My camp in the mountains here. We stay three four of your days. Then all of my men are hereMy brues my big weapons. We go attack the Hill Cityl" He took a step upward toward me. "You find Muta up there with the girl Rowena. You send Muta away, you understand? And you tell Rowena, I not so bad man." I saw again that gleam of irony in his eyes. He gestured and turned away, and from nearby three of his fellows appeared.

  I ascended. In one of the upper rooms I located Rowena and Muta. I stood unobserved for a moment at its threshold -. my heart beating tumultuously at seeing Rowena again. Am with a thrill, realization swept me: this was the room i] which Roc, Jimmy and I had our conference. In this room hidden in its wall, was the secret compartment containin; weapons! And no one now in the vehicle-save Rowen, and myselfknew that they were herel XII HOPE "NO ONE COMING, ROWENA?"

  "NO."

  "It must be here somewherea hidden spring, a lever or something. I saw Roc open it. Was it here? You saw him, Rowena."

  "Yes, therejust a little higher. I think it was off to the left." Rowena stood at the doorway, watching that no one saw us. I searched with my hands along the steel-paneled wall.

  And suddenly was rewarded. What I touched I do not know; some concealed mechanism. The panel slid noiselessly aside.

  I had a fleeting thought that Dorrek would have found this tiny arsenal and emptied it. But he had not. The cupboard shelves still held the rows of little bombs and rockets, tiny strange devices, the operation of which I bad no vaguest notion.

  "Got it, Rowenal Everything's here." I put forward a hand the length of my hobbled reach to touch what seemed a fragile globe with a hooked lever on it. But I paused. If I were to clumsily set it offthis close room might suddenly be filled with a paralyzing gas or a flare of actinic light to strike me blind "Rowena, I'm afraid to touch the blamed things!" But there were several hand projectors of the heat-ray; I knew how to use them. And there were knives.

  -Jackl Quickly!" I could hear the footsteps outside. I seized a small cylinder and drew the slide quickly closed. Rowena came swiftly on tiptoe to join me, and we moved away from the wall. The fastenings of the closing slide clicked faintly. I recall that I wondered if I could ever get the thing open again. The footsteps outside retreated; no one came in.

  "Aren't you hungry, RowenaP"

  "Yes. Shall I tell MutaP"

  "If you can find her." I had stuffed the weapon in my pocket. We were together m the center of the room. Dorrek looked in.

  "Oh, Dorrek!" I called. "Were hungrycan Muta bring us food? We thought we would eat it here together."

  "Yes," he said. His gaze roved us, met mine with his slow, enigmatic smile and he turned away.

  This was a full day-cycle after the ball had landed in the mountain valley. It was the first opportunity I had had to be alone with Rowena long enough to get the secret panel open. We were both prisoners in the upper tier of the ball, though free to move about its several rooms. I had found them all with windows either closed and sealed, or if open, with a stout grid of metal lattice. And there never was a moment when at least three Mercurians were not guarding the lower end of the single inclined ladder.

  This upper tier was infrequently used now. Its two control rooms were unoccupied and sealed. Dorrek's men occasionally came up, but not often; most of the activity was on the lower tier, and outside. Rowena and Muta slept in the room in which the weapon cupboard was hidden, and Dorrek bad assigned me a room nearby.

  What was transpiring in and around the vehicle I had little opportunity to observesuch as the mobilization of the Cold Country army. The only open windows to which I had access faced a sheer black wall a hundred feet away. I could see the dark rocks upon which the vehicle was resting.

  And upward, a thousand feet of forbidding perpendicular cliff against the blackness of the sky.

  We were here, not only that first day-cycle, but three others. The sounds of the arriving men floated in to vs, ~ along with the clank of giant projectors laboriously being dragged over rocks. There were spots of lights outside, and dim vistas of encamped men working to assemble their mechanisms. And sometimes I had brief glimpses of dark lines of things slithering along the rocks. Giant insects the bruesdocile here with their masters.

  The army which had attacked the Water City was here.

  There came others from the Cold County. I could not guess how many. By Earth standards of modern warfare, not many.

  Two thousand, perhaps.

  Soon the whole place seemed glowing with a blue-green radiance. The weather continued with a threat of a slowgathering storm. At times it was solid black night, then vaguely weak twilight, livid with the turgid yellow-green shafts that shot through the gathering clouds. And it was steadily colder outside.

  They were tense hours for Rowena and me. We got the panel open again, but decided to take only a ray-cylinder each.

  The guards at the foot of the ladder were changed at intervals, always armed and wholly alert. I could have shot them down, but I knew it would bring a hundred men upon us before we could get out of the ball's lower door.

  I thought desperately I might break the metallic bars of an upper window, but I had no prolonged opportunity and no tools. The heat-ray from one of our cylinders would melt them through, but we would be discovered.

  There was still Muta. Rowena's first talk with Muta was interrupted, but during the first cycle here in the mountains they spent the time of sleep together, and Rowena cautiously resumed her efforts. Muta was receptive. What Rowena now urged, the woman herself had born in mind when she told Jimmy that some time she would talk to him alone. Certainly she wanted Rowena away.

  "You see, Mutayou saw my husband with me at the meal tonight? He loves me and I love him. Could you not see it?"

  "That true. But what difference? Dorrek a man, take what he want and he want you." Rowena gripped her. "That's the danger! You've got to help us escape from here, Muta!"

  "No, he km me if I try thati I frightened!"

  "Talk softly! He won't kill you. He won't know anyth
ing about it. We'll plan how it can be done. You-at the time of sleep, like nowyou can get the guards away from the ladder." The plan was coming to Rowena as she talked. It was cold outside, and by another time of sleep with the approaching storm it would be still colder. She questioned Muta, found that would probably be so. And outside, Muta said, the men were beginning to wear enshrouding fur robes and hoods. Muta could get two of those. And give Rowena and me a little food and water to take with us.

  It should be possible for the Mercurian woman to get the guards momentarily away from the ladder, long enough for Rowena and me, disguised, to slip past.

  We would be alone in the mountainous wilds of a strange planet, but it was better than being here. I thought I had a general idea of how to get back to the Light Country. It was not far by Earth measurements.

  Muta agreed to try it. She brought the hooded garments, which Rowena had concealed in a couch.

  We thought we would manage the escape the next time of sleep. Muta was ready. Rowena had carefully drilled her in what she was to do.

  We were ready. I was in my room, tense, waiting for Rowena's call. Outside, with a cold rising wind moaning past the rocks, the encampment was setting to sleep.

  And then there was a sudden activity! A shrill distant alarm! A turmoil spreading everywhere. In a moment the lower tier of the ball was resounding with hurrying footsteps.

  Voices shouting.

  I rushed into Rowena. She and Muta were there, standing with the hooded furs.

  "Jackwhat is it? Listen!" Through the window bars the blackness outside was split ~.. .with light flares.

  "JackJack Deani" I heard Dorrek's voice shouting on the ladder. Running footsteps up here in the upper tier. The ball's control rooms were being unsealed.

  Dorrek burst in upon us; Rowena had barely time to hide the furs. Dorrek whirled on me.

  "You stay here with Rowena. We move the ballnot safe here."

  "Do what? Dorrek, wait" But he was gone. In the lower tier I could hear them sealing the outer door. The ball lifted, movednot far and again came to rest, in the middle of the encampment this time, resting on the rocky floor in the center of the valley-bowl. Outside the window we could see the confused glare of leaping, crossing ray beams.