3xT

by Harry Turtledove

  Z'Yon felt its weight over him, as if it were the big metal sky-thing that had crushed a fair number of M'Sak to jelly. "You said I might, my master," he reminded V'Zek, "for my own amusement."

  "For yours, perhaps. I, shaman, am not amused at your maunderings. On the given night we shall attack and we shall win. If you put any other interpretation on what the moltings say, you will no longer be amused, either; that I promise you. Do you grasp my meaning?"

  "With all four claws, my master," Z'Yon assured him, and fled.

  * * *

  Jennifer watched Greenberg cut another piece from the juicy, rare prime rib. "The condemned man ate a hearty meal," he said, and cocked an eyebrow at her. "Is that a quotation from your ancient science fiction?"

  She paused to swallow and cut a fresh piece for herself. The Flying Festoon's autochef did right by beef and nearly everything else, though Koniev swore its vodka was good only for putting in thermometers. She answered, "No. I think it's even older than that."

  "Probably is," Marya agreed. "It sounds as if any society would find it handy."

  "No doubt," Greenberg said. "The T'Kai would certainly think it was relevant tonight." He told the others what he and Jennifer had learned from K'Sed.

  Koniev nodded slowly. "I've heard the barbarians shouting their threats. I didn't take much notice; the translator garbles them a lot of the time, anyway. But they're not bluffing, then?"

  "Not even a little bit," Greenberg said. "That's why we'll stay close by the ship. We may have to pull out in a hurry, and fighting my way back to the Flying Festoon through a mob of panicked or bloodthirsty G'Bur is something I'd rather not even have nightmares about."

  "Sensible," Koniev said. Marya nodded a moment later.

  "Too bad the T'Kai won't be able to take ship with us," Jennifer said.

  "Yes—a good market will close down if the confederacy goes under," Marya said. "V'Zek won't be eager to deal with us, I'm certain."

  "That's not what I meant!" Jennifer said angrily. She noticed the others staring at her and realized that until now she'd never been interested enough in what they were doing to get angry. She went on, "We'll be running away while the highest culture on this planet goes under. That counts for more than markets, if you ask me."

  "Of course it does," Greenberg said. "I told you as much before, when you were setting out the drones, remember? Why do you think we've put so much effort into trying to save T'Kai? No matter how much money's on the line, I wouldn't do foot-soldier duty for a people I didn't like and respect. Do the characters in your old books care that much for profit?"

  She bit her lip. "No, of course not—they're supposed to be true to life, you know."

  "All right, then." Greenberg sounded relieved, maybe because he wanted her to stay involved. "What we've been trying to do, then, is—"

  "Wait," Jennifer told him.

  He, Koniev, and Marya stared again—she hardly ever interrupted. She ignored them. She got up from the table and dashed—again something new—for her cabin. Behind her, Koniev said, "What's twisting her tail?" She ignored that, too.

  She returned a couple of minutes later with her reader set to the right part of the story she'd found. She held it out to Greenberg. "Here. Look at this, please. I think it's important."

  Greenberg set the reader on his nose. He took it off again a moment later. "Jennifer, I'm sorry, but I can't make heads or tails of Middle English, or whatever the right name for this is. What are you trying to show me?"

  She made an exasperated noise and took back the reader. She peered into it, then returned it to him. "This story is called 'The Man Who Sold the Moon.' Do you see the circle, here and on this page?" She hit the forward button. "And here—" She hit it again, "—and here?"

  "The one with '6+' printed inside it? Yes, I see it. What's it supposed to be, some sort of magic symbol?"

  She told him what it was supposed to be. He and Marya and Koniev all looked at one another. "This Heinlein person didn't think small, I have to give him that," Greenberg said slowly. "But I still don't quite follow how you think it applies to our problem here."

  She knew she looked disappointed; she'd expected Greenberg to catch fire from her own inspiration. It was almost poetically apt, she thought: she'd planned to use trading to help her study Middle English science fiction, and now the Middle English science fiction might help her fellow traders. She did some more explaining.

  Koniev said, "Where would we get enough soot, or for that matter rockets?"

  "We don't need rockets," Jennifer said, "and soot wouldn't do us much good here, either. Instead . . ."

  She outlined her plan and watched the three traders think it over. Koniev spoke first. "It might even work, which puts it light-years ahead of anything else we've got going for us."

  "Pulling out the Flying Festoon will be tricky, though," Marya said.

  Greenberg said, "Some of us will have to stay behind, to show the T'Kai we aren't abandoning them." He sounded unhappy at the idea, but firm. "All of us but Jennifer, I think. This is her hobbyhorse; let her ride it if she can."

  "And let her—and us—hope she'll be able to rescue us if she can't," Marya said.

  Jennifer gulped. If her scheme didn't work out as advertised, she'd be a long way away when D'Opt fell. Academia hadn't prepared her for having lives rest on what she did. "It will work," she said. Her nails bit into the palms of her hands. She knew she'd better be right.

  * * *

  V'Zek sent the T'Kai female scuttling out of his tent when the guard called that Z'Yon would have speech with him. "This is important, I take it?" the chieftain rumbled. It was not a question. It was more like a threat.

  Z'Yon stooped low, but managed to keep the ironic edge in his voice. "It is, unless you would sooner not know that the great sky-thing has departed from D'Opt."

  "Has it indeed?" V'Zek forgot about the female, though her shell was delicately fluted and the joints of her legs amazingly limber. "So the Soft Ones give up on their friends at last, do they?" He wished the weird creatures were long gone; without their meddling, he would have overwhelmed T'Kai without having to work nearly so hard.

  Then Z'Yon brought his suddenly leaping spirits down once more. "My master, the Soft Ones themselves are still in D'Opt. They have been seen on the walls since the sky-thing left."

  The chieftain cursed. "They are still plotting something, then. Well, let them plot. The moon still grows dark and red tomorrow night, and the Soft Ones cannot alter that. And our warriors will fight well, for they know the darkened moon portends the fall of T'Kai. They know that because, of course, you have been diligent in instructing them, have you not, Z'Yon?"

  "Of course, my master." The shaman suppressed a shudder. V'Zek was most dangerous when he sounded mildest. As soon as Z'Yon could, he escaped from the chieftain's presence. He wondered how many eyestalks he would have been allowed to keep had he not followed V'Zek's orders in every particular. Surely no more than one, he thought, and shuddered again.

  V'Zek watched the shaman go. He knew Z'Yon had doubts about the whole enterprise. He had doubts himself. The Soft Ones alarmed him. Their powers, even brought to bear without much martial skill, were great enough to be daunting. He would much rather have had them on his side than as foes. But he had beaten them and their chosen allies before, and after one more win they would have no allies left. For a moment, he even thought about trading with them afterward. He wondered what they would want for the weapons that shot sleep as if it were an arrow.

  But even more, he wondered what they were up to.

  The guard broke his chain of thought. "My master, shall I fetch back the female?"

  "Eh? No, don't bother. I've lost the mood. After we win tomorrow, we'll all enjoy plenty of these southron shes."

  "Aye, that we will!" The guard sounded properly eager. V'Zek wished he could match the fellow's enthusiasm.

  * * *

  Jennifer looked at L'Rau in the viewscreen. The world was small enough to
cover with the palm of her hand. Away from the Flying Festoon, the ship's robots were busy getting everything into shape for tonight. She'd had to hit the computer's override to force it to make the gleaming metal spheroids do as she ordered.

  At last, everything was the way she wanted it. She still had a good many hours of waiting before she could do anything else. She got into bed and went to sleep.

  Her last fuzzy thought was that Heinlein would have approved.

  * * *

  L'Rau's sun set. Across the sky, the moon rose. The shadow of the world had already begun to crawl across it. The M'Sak raised a clamor when they saw the eclipse. Their tumult sounded like thousands of percussion instruments coming to demented life all at once.

  The translator could handle some of their dialect. Most of their threats were the same stupid sort soldiers shouted on any planet: warnings of death and maiming. But some M'Sak showed imaginative flair, not least the barbarian who asked the defenders inside D'Opt for the names of their females, so he would know what to call them when he got to T'Kai City.

  The hubbub outside the walls faded. An enormous G'Bur came out from among the soldiers. This, Greenberg thought, had to be the fearsome V'Zek. "Surrender!" he shouted up at the T'Kai. He used the southern speech so well, the translator never hiccuped. "I give you this one last chance. Look to the sky—even the heavens declare your downfall is at hand."

  Prince K'Sed waved a grasping-claw to Greenberg. The master merchant stepped out where the M'Sak could see him; he hoped the sight of a human still had some power to unsettle them. "You are wrong, V'Zek," he said. The translator, and amplifiers all along the wall, sent his reply booming forth, louder than any G'Bur could bellow.

  "Roar as loud as you like, Soft One," V'Zek said. "Your trifling tricks grow boring, and we are no hatchlings, to be taken in by them. As the sky-f'noi makes the moon bleed, so we will bleed you tonight, and all T'Kai thereafter." The M'Sak warriors shouted behind him.

  "You are wrong, V'Zek," Greenberg repeated. "Watch the sky if you doubt me, for it too will show T'Kai's power."

  "Lie as much as you like. It will not save you." V'Zek turned to his troopers. "Attack!"

  M'Sak dashed into archery range and began to shoot, trying to sweep defenders from the walls. The T'Kai shot back. Greenberg hastily ducked behind a parapet. He was more vulnerable to arrows than any local.

  "What if you are wrong, Soft One, and your ploy fails?" Only B'Rom would have asked that question.

  "Then we die," Greenberg said, a reply enough to the point to silence even the cynical vizier. B'Rom walked away; had he been a human, he would have been shaking his head.

  Arrows ripped through the T'Kai banners above the master merchant. He glanced up. The grasping-claw that stood for the confederacy had a hole in it. Not liking the symbolism of that, he looked away.

  Shouts and alarmed clatterings came from the wall not far away. The translator gabbled in overload, then produced a word Greenberg could understand. "Ladders!"

  Though poles set into a wall sufficed for the G'Bur, when such aids were absent the locals, because of the way they were built, needed wider and more cumbersome ladders than humans used. That did not stop the M'Sak from slapping them against the walls of D'Opt and swarming toward the top. In fact, it made the defenders' job harder than it would have been in medieval human siege warfare—being heavier than scaling ladders made for humans, these were harder to topple.

  Without exposing more than his arm, Greenberg expended a stun cartridge when the top of a ladder poked over the wall. The barbarian nearly at the level of the battlements tumbled back onto his comrades below. They all crashed to the ground. Cheering, the T'Kai used a forked pole to push over the suddenly empty ladder.

  "Good idea!" Koniev shouted. He imitated Greenberg. Another set of crashes, another overturned ladder.

  "I'd like it better if I had more than—" Greenberg checked the charge gauge, "—half a dozen shots left."

  "Eight here," Koniev said. Marya was somewhere off around the wall's circuit. Greenberg hoped she would not stop an arrow. For that matter, he hoped he would not stop one himself.

  "Ladders!" The cry came from two directions at once. The master merchant looked at the moon. L'Rau's shadow covered more than half of it, but totality was still close to an hour away. "Ladders!" This shout was further away. Click-pop-hiss-click: By now, Greenberg had heard the T'Kai word often enough to recognize it in the original, even if he needed electronics to reproduce it.

  "Lad—" This time, the cry cut off abruptly after click-pop—an arrow must have found its mark. The M'Sak were throwing everything they had into this attack. Greenberg worried. Jennifer hadn't counted on the possibility of D'Opt's falling in a hurry. Neither had he. If that was a mistake, it was likely to be his last one.

  * * *

  "Forward!" V'Zek roared. "Forward!" He wished he could have gone up the first ladder and straight into D'Opt. Waiting behind the scenes for his warriors to do the job was the hardest part of being chieftain. He corrected himself: no, the hardest part was knowing he needed to hold back, and not giving in to the urge to go wild and slaughter.

  If he suppressed that urge all the time, he wondered, would he be civilized? He found the idea ridiculous. He would only be bored.

  He cast two critical eyes on the fighting, turned a third to Z'Yon, who was clipping a wounded M'Sak's shell so no sharp edges would further injure the soft tissues inside. His fourth eye, as it had been most of the night, was on the moon. The fully lit portion grew ever smaller.

  "You were right, shaman," he said, an enormous concession from him. But even a chieftain felt small and insignificant when the natural order of the world turned upside down.

  Z'Yon did not answer until he had finished his task—had his prediction been wrong, he would have dared no such liberty. What would have happened to him had he been wrong was unpleasant to contemplate anyhow. He hoped he sounded casual rather than relieved when he said, "So it seems."

  "The warriors truly know the meaning of the prodigy," V'Zek went on. "They fight bravely. I think they will force an entrance into the town not long after the whole moon goes into the jaws of the f'noi in the sky. You did well in instructing them and insuring that they would be of stout spirit for the battle."

  "I did as you commanded, my master." Z'Yon's eyestalks tingled in remembered fright. A ladder went over, directly in front of the shaman and his chieftain. Injured M'Sak flailed legs in pain. One lay unmoving. "They fight well inside D'Opt, too."

  "Doubtless their leaders and the Soft Ones have filled them with nonsense so they will not despair at our might," V'Zek said scornfully. "And see over there!" He pointed with a grasping-claw. "We've gained a stretch of wall! Surely the end cannot be far away."

  "Surely not, my master." Z'Yon wished he had not taken omens with the moltings; he would have had no qualms now about being as excited as V'Zek. He tried to stifle his doubts. He had been wrong before, often enough.

  The last bit of white disappeared from the moon. V'Zek shouted in a voice huge enough to pierce the tumult. "Now we hold the moment between our claws! Strike hard and T'Kai falls. The sky gives us victory!"

  "The sky gives us victory!" the warriors cried, and redoubled their efforts. The dim red light made seeing hard, but cries of alarm from the walls showed places where the M'Sak were gaining fresh clawholds. Z'Yon decided he had been wrong again after all.

  * * *

  The last bit of white disappeared from the moon. "Now's the time, Jennifer," Greenberg said quietly into his comm unit. "Get things rolling, or the T'Kai have had it."

  The pause that followed was longer than speed-of-light could account for. The master merchant started to call down curses on Jennifer's head. He wished he could take her damned reader and wrap it around her neck. He was starting to get more creative than that when she said, "Initiated."

  He checked his watch. The delay had been less than fifteen seconds. All she'd done, obviously, was start the progr
am before she answered him. He felt ashamed of himself. The fighting had screwed up his time sense.

  He hoped he hadn't waited too long. T'Kai warriors fought desperately to keep the M'Sak from enlarging the two or three lodgments they had on top of the wall and to keep them from dropping down into D'Opt. If the southerners broke now, nothing could save them. But if he'd told Jennifer to start before the eclipse was total, odds were her scheme would have been wasted.

  Too late for ifs now, anyhow. He wondered how long things would take at the Flying Festoon's end. When he judged the moment ripe, he started the tape that was loaded into his translator. The amplifiers around the wall made all the battle din, all V'Zek's shouts, seem as whispers beside his voice. "The very heavens proclaim the glory of T'Kai! Look to the sky, you who doubt, and you will see the truth writ large on the face of the moon itself!"

  The message repeated, over and over. In the spaces between, the master merchant heard what he most hoped for: quiet. T'Kai and M'Sak alike were peering upward with all their eyes.

  "Hurry up, Jennifer, dammit," Greenberg muttered. He made sure the translator could not pick up what he said.

  * * *

  ". . . Look to the sky, you who doubt, and you will see the truth writ large on the face of the moon itself!" That roar might have been enough to frighten the M'Sak troops, had they not heard it before. More Soft One trickery, V'Zek thought, and handled as ineptly as the rest of their stunts.

  Nevertheless, he looked. He could not help it, not with that insistent great voice echoing and re-echoing on his tympanic membrane. The moon remained dim and bronze—alarming, but alarming in a familiar way.

  V'Zek laughed, loud and long. The last bluff had failed. No one but the f'noi in the sky could harm the moon, and from the f'noi it always won free in the end.

  "Lies!" V'Zek shouted. "Lies!"

  And as he watched, as he shouted, the moon changed.

  * * *

  A light-sail is nothing more than a gauze-thin sheet of aluminized plastic, thousands of kilometers across. When fully extended, it holds photons' energy as a seaboat's sail traps the wind. As it needs no internal power source, it makes a good emergency propulsion system for a starship.