Atta (1953) by Francis Rufus Bellamy

by Atta (pdf)

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  over, then, although the hour was late, I took my way

  to Nura’s.

  Nuru was still up, and he greeted me with his usual

  cold, impenetrable gentleness; but he disclaimed all

  knowledge of the affair. “Draca has his own way of

  handling things,” he said with a sigh. “So I can only presume that he is aware of what he is doing.”

  “Then you personally don’t know of what Atta is accused?” I persisted.

  “My dear fellow,” said Nuru, “the mere fact that he

  has been sent to the Oval is sufficient.”

  “It’s not sufficient for me,” I said. “I need Atta on my

  staff. I resent Draca’s interference with the army. I want

  him released at once.”

  “You have no idea, then,” said Nuru, “why Atta has

  been sent to the Oval?”

  “Only what that stupid Subser says,” I replied.

  “It does not occur to you that perhaps Draca wishes to

  question him?” asked Nuru.

  “Very good,” I said with equal coldness. “Then I wish

  to question Draca—or have one of his assistants questioned. Perhaps a little fire at his feet would elicit the necessary information.”

  “You are speaking unwisely,” said Nuru, “to threaten

  Draca. To question any Fusan’s actions is to imply that

  there is need to question his patriotism.” He stared at

  me reflectively. “Is Atta so important to you?” he asked,

  “that you would traduce Draca’s character?”

  “Draca is interfering with the community’s military

  security,” I said coldly, “to please his own personal mood.

  He has moods, you may remember—and as I do not forget.”

  Nuru smiled thinly. “I have no love for Draca,” he

  said. “But you are a Stranger to our customs, or you would

  not allow yourself to be guilty of a personal interest in a

  fellow Fusan. This alone would serve to disqualify you

  in this case.”

  “So there is a case?” I retorted. “What is it?”

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  “Permit me to remind you,” said Nuru coldly, “that

  individual discussion is not permitted in Fusa. Your

  mere action in coming here draws censure upon you—

  and would upon me if I did not call your error to your

  attention.”

  “Surely,” I said, you are at liberty to tell me what Atta

  has done and what is to be done to him in the Oval.”

  “I know nothing personally,” said Nuru, “and I have

  no personal opinion. I am simply in possession of the

  facts.” He took a drink of nectar and stared at me with

  his icy gentleness.

  “Well?” I prompted him.

  “Did Atta ever tell you,” he inquired softly, “that his

  first scouting trip from Forza was wholly his own idea,

  without authorization? That because of it his troop was

  massacred and he himself left alone?” He paused, but not

  for an answer. “Did he tell you when you first found him

  exactly why he had never returned to Forza but had

  taken refuge in a common wooden hut? Did he explain

  where his companions were? Did he give any reason why

  he was even then not on his way to Fusa?”

  “He was unable to evade the Rubicundians,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” said Nuru. “Or was it because he did not

  wish to return—because he preferred to stay where he

  was?”

  “That’s quite untrue,” I said hotly. “He talked of little

  else than getting hack to Fusa.”

  “To you, perhaps,” said Nuru coldly, “but not to himself. Or to Subser. We have Subser’s word for that.”

  “That was later,” I said, “in Rubicundia. He did not believe Subser could guide us back, and I had not recovered my weapons to make escape possible.”

  “You had your weapons in the wooden hut,” said

  Nuru, “before you were captured by the Rubicundians.

  But your companion did not guide you here. He grew

  mushrooms in the hut, he fortified it, he dug a tunnel for

  the winter. He wished to stay there indefinitely, as an

  individual Formican.

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  “For what purpose? To help Fusa? Or to leam to make

  sounds on instruments, to take hunting trips, to pursue

  new thoughts on small boards of squares; in short, to be

  an individual?” His eyes seemed almost white as he

  looked sharply at me. “Who thought of these things? You

  or Atta?”

  “Nobody ‘thought’ of them,” I said. “They passed the

  time.”

  “A Formican does not merely pass the time,” said

  Nuru. “You are a Stranger, and you may not know this.

  But Atta was not a Stranger: he was a Fusan, even if a

  provincial. He was not playing. He was becoming something less than a Formican—an individual.”

  He took another sip of nectar.

  “The fact is incontrovertible,” he said. “Even in Rubi-

  cundia—even when he was a prisoner—he had to be persuaded by others to return to his own people. Why? Because he knew very well that the truth about his actions would be known the moment he appeared in Fusa. He

  could not return without some excuse, some reparation.

  Not until he had solved this difficulty did he consent to

  go with you and Subser. And how did he solve it? By

  pretending that he was the one who was returning and

  that he was bringing you with him. By being himself the

  one to introduce you to Fusa as his contribution to the

  military glory of his country.”

  “Oh, now, come!” I said. “That is patently absurd.”

  “It is not absurd,” retorted Nuru. “It is fact. Was not

  Subser dismissed when you entered Fusa? Did not Atta

  bring you to the Oval as your sole sponsor? Did he not return to your quarters at the first opportunity, to avail himself of your protection as the hero of the Natissian

  campaign? Once there, did he not discuss new thoughts

  until far into the night? Did he not criticise Fusa and

  traduce her traditions? Did he not place the criminal feeling of friendship above his own kinship, above Fusa itself?”

  “There is no proof of all this,” I retorted.

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  “Pardon me,” said Nuru softly. “We have all the proof.

  Subser himself was there, and I have the complete record.

  Draca and I have both gone over it.”

  “Then you knew all along of what Atta is accused?’* I

  burst out.

  “I could not believe it,” said Nuru, “until Draca put all

  the pieces together.”

  “And now that you do believe it,” I asked grimly, “what

  do you propose to do about it?”

  “That is not for me to say,” said Nuru. “The penalty is

  already well known.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Trial by combat in the Oval,” said Nuru. “A Monster,

  I presume.”

  “Such as the one Draca selected for me?” I asked with

  a cold fury that I tried hard to conceal.

  "Precisely,” agreed Nuru. “If Atta can overcome a Monster, he too is too valuable to be dispensed with.”

  “Doubtless,” I said sarcastically. “And when will the

  combat take place?”
/>   “On the day that follows tomorrow,” said Nuru. ‘In the

  regular afternoon session.”

  “Good,” I said. “I shall be there myself to observe

  Atta’s work,”

  And with that I turned on my heel and left him abruptly, lest I draw my hatchet from my belt and, killing Nuru with one blow, seal Atta’s fate forever by rousing

  all Fusa against me while Atta himself still lay helpless

  in prison, facing utter destruction.

  Indeed, at that moment I felt that I was fortunate in

  being able to leave Nuru’s apartment at all. For now

  that I knew the truth at last it was clear that without

  me Atta was doomed. Incomparable fighter as he was,

  he could never stand up against the obscene, fetid Monster. No single Formican could. Such combat was not combat, but murder. And murder was what the leaders

  of Fusa intended the combat to be. The picture rose before me vividly as I stood an instant on Nuru’s doorstep,

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  and I do not mind admitting that for the first time in my

  life I felt the faint, cold chill of impending and inevitable

  disaster.

  This is a different feeling from that of panic or dread,

  and it struck me like a raw quick wind, because I realized how deep inside a strange city Atta and I were caught, and by what preposterous creatures. In these

  Fusans there was no trace of feeling for Atta, no affection

  of any kind for a comrade they all had known well and

  respected. They were like mechanical men to whom

  there could be no appeal because their minds were set

  and their eyesight removed. They would see Atta murdered with mere grim approval. Faced with such creatures—millions of them—what could I, a mere man, do?

  The question beat upon me coldly as I went home

  through Fusa’s streets to my own silent gallery. For it was

  evident now that Atta and I had been playing with fire

  in our idle discussions. The laws of Fusa might be invisible, but they were real and inexorable. Once aroused to action, Fusans were implacable.

  Indeed, where in all Fusa was there a gallery like ours?

  Tire question forced me to admit the inevitability of

  Draca’s action as I looked around at our silent quarters.

  My flute beside Atta’s chair, the chessboards and the

  chessmen that Atta had carved, the model of our house

  in the woods with the two figures he had made in its

  doorway, the twin gourds and plates he had made for our

  dining alcove—these things were not Fusan. They were

  the possessions of an individual, evidence of a human

  being, not a Formican.

  Was I not to blame, then? Not Atta? For who if not

  I had evoked in Atta a desire for these simple things?

  What were they but symbols of the desire to be a single

  person, an individual like myself?

  At the perception an immense regret enveloped me as

  I lay on my couch in my dim gallery. I looked back over

  all the days and nights of my friendship with Atta, and

  I could not recollect anything that I had given to make

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  up for what I had taken away from him. Nothing more

  than these few pitiful individualistic crumbs had he got

  to compensate him for the loss of his belief in Fusa, The

  inadequacy of the exchange stunned me and left me too

  heartsick even to think clearly.

  Tears came to my eyes at the remembrance of everything Atta and I had experienced together, and I rose and walked up and down the gallery hour after hour until the very quiet of the evening street outside began to oppress me. For I knew now that except for me there was

  no help in Fusa for either Atta or myself—And what

  could I do—a single stranger in a vast city?

  Such was the question that I asked myself in the small

  hours of the morning; and to this day I am amazed at the

  answer that I found. For there was despair in my search

  for a solution, and it impelled me to examine all the

  meanings of my situation until there came to me at last

  a kind of cunning that I would not have believed in my

  nature.

  Yes, I was alone, this cunning told me, so far as my

  feelings for Atta went. But in another sense I was not

  alone at all. I was the commander of a Fire Feeder brigade to whom my slightest command was law. Three miles distant, on the drill grounds outside the gates, lay

  more than five thousand Formicans who would follow me

  anywhere—even into Fusa’s own Oval. Should I not,

  could I not, contrive to use my own soldiers, in some desperate plan? Watched as I doubtless was, could I still not devise some maneuver that would at least hold out

  one chance in a thousand of rescuing Atta before it was

  too late?

  Obviously I could, I decided, if I set my mind to it.

  And from this decision there came the plan I eventually

  followed.

  What was this plan? Well, I must admit that as I first

  saw it that early morning in the gallery it was only a

  plan in embryo, born of certain things that I realized

  clearly were in my favor. For example, the Formicans

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  have not perfected any method of swift long-distance

  communication. Once one is in front of one’s pursuers,

  escape is merely a question of relative speeds. And I

  had Trotta, who could outdistance any Fusan pursuit.

  Again, the fear of fire and smoke is one of the most terrible of all fears to the Formican, and I had the ability to produce fire and, with the aid of my Fire Feeders to

  threaten all Fusa with a conflagration. Merely with these

  two advantages, then, did I not posses the elements of a

  successful coup d'etat? In short, could I not, granted the

  proper timing, bring the threat of conflagration into the

  Oval itself and under cover of the confusion thus produced seize Atta from his guards and carry him off on Trotta?

  Certainly such an action held more than a faint hope

  of success if I myself could manage to he present in the

  arena before my Fire Feeders arrived. For I should then

  have an opportunity to rescue Atta before his jailers could

  carry him away. Indeed, all that seemed doubtful in that

  event was whether or not my Fire Feeders could be

  counted on to come to the Oval if I myself were not at

  their head to keep giving the usual words of command.

  This point was the nub of my first cogitations on the

  subject; and in them my judgment was not wholly obscured by my vanity. Even before the capture of Natissia the discipline of the Fire Feeders had been so noticeably

  excellent that their officers hung on my slightest gesture

  before executing any maneuver. And the Fire Feeders

  themselves had long since accepted every order of mine

  almost automatically. Indeed, Nuru’s factotums had so

  materially aided in specializing their inherent soldierly

  reactions that Bonaparte himself might have envied me

  the loyalty and blind obedience of this particular regiment of troops.

  As a foundation, therefore, I had a body of trained

  soldiers blindly obedient to my personal command; and

  this was a fact of the highest importance. The only question was, would an order given by me in advance be

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  carried out when I was no longer present in person? This

  was an open question, because the ordinary Formican

  soldier responds easily enough to the instant word of

  command but finds long-range orders difficult to remember and is prone to relapse into mechanical action.

  It was, then, of the utmost importance that this question be answered, and at once. For to achieve my ends—

  a successful coup detat in the Oval—I myself must be

  already in my seat below the dais, ready to take instant

  advantage of the confusion that would result from a preplanned diversion. Yet the sine qua non was that the Fire Feeders arrive by themselves; on this one point I might

  have to stake Atta’s life and my own. On this one point,

  therefore, I concentrated as soon as I could get to the

  drill grounds. In fact, I worked all the day on it, until

  finally, to my gratification and joy, one full hour elapsed

  between one of my delayed-action orders and its execution. As for marching into the city and executing maneuvers there, none of the officers seemed to have the slightest objection or to consider the idea either original

  or startling. By sundown I was encouraged enough to

  indulge in actual hope.

  Meanwhile I was still very much on pins and needles

  where Atta and I were concerned. When Subser had at

  last gone for the night I wasted no time in cursing his

  part in our betrayal. Instead, in the silent gallery I

  packed every ounce of food and nectar left in the house

  and put them into the two saddlebags that still remained

  to bring back to mind my former hunting expeditions

  with Atta. These I took out to the stable corridor where

  Trotta was hobbled, followed them with my weapons,

  lassos, and suit of armor in a bundle, and spent until

  nearly dawn carefully loading that faithful beast.

  Soon after sun-up I was ready to go, and shortly before

  the appointed hour I got into my saddle, with a whispered word to Trotta, and we set off for the drill grounds at a smart trot. Thus on that early summer morning I

  said good-bye to my spacious quarters in Fusa without

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  regret. It was an act upon which I look back without

  emotion to this day. For those rooms, despite their magnificence, were never anything but an uneasy prison to me, and they have remained in my memory always as