by James Gunn
The darkness had been a comfortable blanket as he had crept from the ledge toward the mesa. Since then it had become a curtain through which he couldn’t find his way, a barrier he couldn’t climb, an opponent he couldn’t fight. It was an enemy, like the three hundred light years, like the arid desert, like the hunters, like the mesa wall.
The darkness would pass, as the others had passed, but the unscalable wall would still be there, tall, straight, bleak—impassable.
Now time was an enemy too, this an enemy escaping, slipping away hour by hour, fleeing minute by minute. The Earth turned, the night whispered by him, and the sun would find him—where? Still searching for a place to scale the unscalable? Or lying in wait for an unsuspecting victim at the scene of Eron’s greatest moment? The bullet in his pistol was paid for; the money hung heavy at his waist.
Horn’s jaw tightened for a moment—and relaxed. He had conquered the others; he would conquer these. Destiny had shadowed him from the first, stepping in his tracks as his foot left them. Soon he would hold the moment, fixed on a sharp point of time like a butterfly wriggling upon a pin—just as he held his victim within a telescopic sight, a solitary player upon a fatal stage, and his finger would squeeze, slowly, slowly.…
The glow reddened, flickered, became certain.
It came from a depression backed against the sheer wall. Fire painted scarlet figures and dancing shadows on gray granite.
Horn crawled around the depression, silently, just beyond the fire-tinged rim of dust. The voices stopped him. One was a man’s voice, mumbling, indistinct. The other was high-pitched, shrill, and vaguely feminine. A woman? Here? Horn shook his head and listened.
“Come, now,” she said. “A little food. A tiny morsel? A forgotten grain? Shake out that old tin box. Surely you’ll find a bite for starving Lil.”
The man mumbled something.
“Search, old man. Look hard! I’m not asking for diamonds, you know, even a little one no bigger than a seed. Please? For Lil? A bit of coal? A speck of dust? You’re an ungrateful old man. Day and night, sleepless, Lil works to feed you, to keep you alive when you should have been dead long, long ago, and you won’t give poor Lil the smallest crumb to keep her from starving.…” The words faded into soft sobs.
Horn stared at the shadows leaping against the rock face. One, darker and more distinct than the others, slowly became solid and real, a projection of fantasy against the gray solidity of fact. It looked like a squat, black demon with two heads, one round and featureless, the other hook-nosed and fiercely dominant.
Horn looked away and crawled on. Every few meters he stopped to listen. The desert sent no warning. When he completed the half-circle, against the mesa wall once more, he knew that there was no one near except an old man and a weeping woman.
The sobs broke into a scream. “All right, you old sot. If you won’t give me anything to eat, at least don’t keep all the liquor to yourself. Give me a slug, you depraved old man, you befuddled rum-pot, you.…” The description that followed was fantastically scurrilous and inventive.
Horn raised his head cautiously above the dusty rim. And froze, stunned.
Below, between the campfire and the mesa wall, an old man leaned against a rounded boulder. Below a tight, scarlet skullcap was a wrinkled, yellow face. Slanted eyes were half-closed. A dirty yellow handkerchief knotted around a short neck was the color of the skin that peeked through a torn shirt of bright, green synsilk. A single suspender held up a baggy pair of space breeches.
Behind him, perched on the boulder, was a gaudy, red-and-green bird; it balanced itself precariously on one leg as the other tilted a half-liter bottle into a preposterously big bill. She was bedraggled and disreputable. One tail-feather was broken and several were obviously missing. She had only one eye; it blinked in the firelight.
A small pot hung over the fire. From it drifted an odor that brought a jet of saliva into Horn’s mouth. The only other thing in the hollow was a battered metal suitcase close beside the old man.
Horn took a deep breath and launched himself into the camp, his pistol in his hand. One foot kicked dust over the fire as he passed. It died, smoking. Horn stopped with his back against the rock wall.
The bird strangled. She dropped the bottle and fluttered into the air on battered wings. The old man sprang to his feet, black eyes wild and staring, fat quivering on his round face and short, stout body.
“Pirates!” the bird croaked. “Stand by to repel boarders!”
The color of the man’s wrinkled, ageless face had faded to a pale yellow. “No killee!” he said in an archaic dialect. His voice quavered nasally. “Please no killee poor China boy.” He hiccoughed. Horn caught a faint whiff of synthetic alcohol. “Poor li’l China laundly boy no makee bother noblody!”
It sounded phony to Horn. Phonier, even, than the ridiculous pair being here below the ruins of Sunport.
Horn glanced at the suitcase beside the man’s feet. There was lettering on the side; it was scratched, faded, and archaic, like the old man’s speech. It said: Mr. Oliver Wu, Proprietor, New Canton Sanitary Laundry. Horn took four quick strides to the right. On the other side, he read: Lily. The Mathematical Parrot. Can Do Sums.
“Poor China boy will get himself killed quick with a fire on the Forbidden Ground,” Horn said deliberately. “A hunting party of the Golden Folk trailed me to within half a kilometer of this spot.”
Wu’s face got paler. His legs gave way under him. He sank down in front of the boulder. The parrot settled on his shoulder, staring at Horn with her one good eye.
“Poor li’l China boy,” Wu said shakily. “No gottee nothing. One stupid bird.” He cringed as the bird bit his ear. “One dirty clothes.” His patched, outsize boot kicked the battered suitcase. “No makee tlouble noblody.”
“The hunters will kill you just as quick,” Horn said casually. “They’re gone now, but they’ll be back. If we’re still here.…” He let it hang in the air, unfinished.
“No one talks well,” the parrot said, “with gun in face.”
Horn laughed, mirthlessly, and dropped the gun. The cord pulled it up tightly to his chest, ready to the slap of his hand. “Smart bird,” he said. “Very smart. Smart enough to talk better than his master.”
Slowly the color returned to Wu’s face. “They aren’t close then?” he panted. “The hunters?”
“You can speak the lingua! Maybe you can speak it well enough to tell me what you’re doing here.”
Wu sighed and breathed easier. “Even miserable creatures like us must live—or think we must,” he said sorrowfully. “When the rich feast, crumbs fall under the table. Hunger is a fearful goad. It drove us a weary distance across the dreadful desert to reach the Victory Dedication. Tormented by thirst, chased by the hunters.” Wu shuddered. “We saw three men die for their sport.”
Lil waggled her head, her eyes gleaming in the darkness. “The bloody, bloody hunters. And the dead men all had guns like yours, stranger.”
“Odd,” Wu mused, “that they should have unitron pistols. Eron guards them jealously.” He glanced slantingly at Horn. Horn stared back, his arms folded across his chest, his lips a straight, immobile line. “Many died,” Wu went on, “but we got through the desert and the hunters, and tomorrow we will be at the ruins. And there we will find means to continue life a little longer, eh, Lil?”
Horn’s eyelids flickered.
“The weak are killed,” Lil said flatly. “The fit survive.”
She cocked her head and stared at the ground. The bottle had long since spilled its contents into the dust. “Oh, the lovely, lovely liquor. All gone, all gone.” A large tear gathered in her eye and dropped onto Wu’s green shirt.
Suddenly Wu scrambled to his knees. Lil flapped into the air, complaining raucously. Wu knelt beside the ashes of the fire and peered into the pot. “Dust in the stew. Ah, me! But maybe something can be saved.” He picked up a battered spoon, carefully skimmed off the surface layer of liquid, and cast it o
n the ground. The second dip he raised to his lips. He tasted it critically. “Marred but edible. Insignificant as our lives are, stranger, you have disrupted them considerably.”
“Horn is the name.” A flick of his hand sent a glistening crystal disk spinning through the air; Wu caught it deftly. “I’m in nobody’s debt.”
“A five-kellon piece,” Wu said, raising the gold-banded disk to his eye. The clouds had begun to scatter; a few stars peered through. “Genuine, too. The beautiful new regent. Beauty and value. A rare combination. It will more than repay us for our inconvenience, eh, Lil?” The coin disappeared in Wu’s voluminous clothing.
“What is beauty to an empty stomach?” the parrot grumbled.
“Proof Lil has the soul of an earthworm.” Wu began ladling stew into two chipped plastic plates. He held one out to Horn. “Here. Since you have paid, you deserve a share.”
Horn hesitated momentarily and then walked forward to accept the food. He retreated to the wall, squatted on his heels, and waited. Ignoring Horn’s caution, Wu dived into the mixture with thick fingers. After a moment, Horn began to eat. In spite of an occasional bite that gritted between the teeth, the stew was surprisingly delicious. Small chunks of meat were identifiably rabbit; the other ingredients were obscure.
It vanished quickly. Horn tilted the plate to his mouth and let the last of the broth trickle down his throat. For the first time in many days, his stomach felt warm and full. He was sleepy and tired; taut muscles and strung nerves relaxed. The warmth swept out toward the fat old man and his bird like a wave of gratitude—
Horn straightened, scoured his plate in the sand at the base of the rock wall, and dropped it at Wu’s feet. “Thanks,” he said flatly. He went back to the wall, wiping greasy fingers on the rags of his pants. He squatted again and keyed his senses to their habitual, restless awareness.
Wu had pushed his plate away with a contented sigh. He turned to the suitcase beside him, his body blocking Horn’s view. When he swung back, the suitcase was closed and another half-liter of alcohol was in his hand. He took several generous swallows and held it out, inquiringly, to Horn. Horn shook his head. Lil, who had eaten nothing, grabbed the neck of the bottle with eager claws. She turned it up; the clear liquid gurgled down her throat.
Wu rummaged in a deep pocket and finally pulled out a battered plug of lethe weed. Fastidiously cleaning one corner of lint, he gnawed it off and began to chew, his eyes half-closed.
Horn studied him. The last man he had seen mix the weed and alcohol had died quickly. At one time, Horn had smuggled the weed, but fumes from the hold had knocked out everyone for days and almost wrecked the ship. Wu seemed unaffected.
The old man spat. The dust turned a reddish-brown. “Here we are,” he mused. “Three outcasts met on the Forbidden Ground. Did you know this was once the most fertile farmland on the continent?”
“I don’t believe it,” Horn said.
Wu shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I mention it only to illustrate the folly of men who think they shape their destinies. What strange eddy in the river of history swept us here? Where will it take us next?”
“It takes me nowhere,” Horn said. “I go where I wish.”
“So we think, so we think. In the middle of things, we see no pattern. But as we look back and view the picture whole, we realize how men are moved about by forces they do not suspect. The pieces fall into place. The pattern is clear.”
Horn was silent.
“Lil and I, we think we go to the ruins of Sunport because we choose, but it is our hunger that drives us. And hunger is a force that has no equal. Why do you go there?”
The question was casual and unexpected; it took Horn by surprise. He blinked once before his eyes narrowed. “Who said I do?”
“Why else should you be here on the desert? Do you go to steal, like Lil and I, or to kill?”
“There is no other choice?”
“For a deserter with a gun? What else would he be doing at the Dedication? To steal or to kill, it makes no difference. The ruins will be better guarded than any spot in the Empire, and brute force must always bow to greater force. It is a pity for one to die so young.”
Horn waited. He had schooled himself to wait until others had identified themselves and their purposes.
“We’re three of a kind,” Wu said. “We need have no secrets, one from the others. Lil and I, we have lived too long to be moralists. Men must live, and they must do what they must do.”
“I won’t die,” Horn said.
“So we think, so we all think. And yet we do. But you may be right. You won’t die now because you won’t reach the ruins in time.”
“You’re wrong,” Horn said calmly. “As you said, we are three of a kind. We need have no secrets. You are going to the Dedication; you will show me the way.”
The cold certainty that the old man would be his guide had come a long time ago. Maybe he had known it as he watched from above the depression.
“No, no,” Wu stammered. “I couldn’t do that. I mean—that would be—”
Horn’s eyes were icy on Wu’s face.
Wu squirmed, shrugged, and sank back. “As you will. Outcasts must stick together. But you don’t realize the chain of causation you are beginning.”
“Men,” Lil said darkly, “fashion their own nooses.”
Horn stared at them silently, ridges slowly forming between his eyebrows. Wu yawned, shivered, and lay down by the cold ashes of the fire. He curled into a fetal position.
“No watch?” Horn asked sardonically.
“For what?” Wu’s voice was muffled. “Death will come, just as dawn will come. If they come together, there is no help for it. I’m not going to stay awake to watch for either.”
“How have you survived so long?”
A yawn reached Horn’s ears. “By eating regularly, sleeping whenever possible, and not worrying about tomorrow. The wall is to our backs. Where would we run? Besides, Lil will watch.”
Horn shrugged and climbed with habitual caution to the rim of the depression. After his senses had adjusted to the silence and the night, he let them roam out into the desert, but they brought him no warning. He settled down against the mesa wall to wait out the night.
The clouds had vanished. The stars were out, and the sky was brilliant. He could see a long way into the desert; it was lifeless. He pinched the heavy belt inside the waistband of his pants. A coin was ejected into his hand. The crystal disk had a silver rim. He held it up between his eye and the stars.
His hand trembled. He caught it quickly, stopped the tremor, held the coin steady. The strain had been great for a long time, but it would be fatal to let loose now.
Garth Kohlnar stared at him out of the coin. His massive, bronze face, his stiff, reddish hair, his yellow-gray eyes were startlingly lifelike. Powerful and dominant, the General Manager of the Eron Company fixed the holder of the coin with unwavering eyes, as if to say:
“Here is money. Here is the stuff of trade, the symbol of empire. Here is good money, hard money, crafted so carefully that counterfeit is impossible, backed by all the might and wealth of Eron. You have toiled for it, but your toil was not wasted. You hold your reward in your hands, a work of art, a token of value. Whatever you have done to get this coin was worthwhile. You own a share of Eron. Ask for it. It will be delivered without question.”
The night wind was cold on Horn’s half-naked body. He resisted the impulse to shiver. He laid the coin in the dust of the desert and drew out another and another until five of the crystal disks lay side by side, silver-rimmed, orange, green, blue, black. The General Manager and four of his five Directors: Matal for Power, Fenelon for Transport, Ronholm for Commerce, Duchane for Security.
Five faces: thin and round, long and short, bold and cunning. The differences were unimportant. They all had the golden skin of the pureblood, and an even deeper kinship spoke through the eyes. It was the kinship of power, an imperial hunger only half-satisfied and basically unappe
asable.
The sixth coin was gold-banded like the one Horn had tossed to Wu. The symbol of the Directorship of Communications. Horn held the coin up to the stars.
The coin held a woman’s face as a morning flower holds a drop of dew, mirroring in it the limitless possibilities of the world that begins again. Her skin was softly golden against red-gold hair confined by a fillet of immense white diamonds. Her red lips curved gently in the faint beginning of a smile; they promised an empire to the man who could win them. And her head, held proudly, told him that an empire would not be enough to lay at her feet. Her tawny eyes looked out at Horn, sank deep into his eyes, judging, weighing.…
Is this the man?
“The lovely Wendre,” a voice wheezed. “Wendre Kohlnar, the new Director, daughter of the General Manager.”
Startled, Horn turned at the first words. His hand darted toward his gun, dropping the coin. Wu knelt beside him. He was unarmed. Horn’s hand fell back to his side.
“Beautiful,” Wu went on casually, “and heir to all that.” He waved a careless hand at the star-studded sky. “If she can find a man strong enough to hold it for her.”
“All except that,” Horn said. He pointed toward the seven sisters of the Pleiades Cluster, just rising on the horizon. “Eron has conquered the Quarnon League, but keeping it is another matter.”
“The tides of empire rise,” Wu said softly. “A few always flee in front of it, but the waves crash after them. Now they have crushed the Cluster. They have smashed it flat. It will never rise again. When the tide recedes at last, it will leave only sand-strewn ruins.”
“The defeat isn’t final. Not while the Liberator lives.”
“You think Eron doesn’t know that?” Wu asked. “Peter Sair was sent to Prison Terminal. Vantee. A few months ago, he died there. Or so it is said.”
“Dead?” Horn said. He stared toward the horizon, toward the Pleiades, toward the cluster of stars that were close enough for civilization without the Tube, where freedom had died. He stared toward home and realized for the first time that he could never go back.
