“He doesn’t think I would do it, does he, Sammy?” O’Neill groaned and clenched his fists.
“He did not say that he would disapprove. Surely just once … we will soon die, all of us, you know that. Then there will be nothing.”
“Of that I’m not so sure, but even then…” He turned away from her flesh, all the more appealing because of the gentle marks of age on it.
“Marjetta is no longer a maiden. We all know that. She too will be taken by others. It is our way. She will not blame you.”
She might and she might not blame me. But she isn’t going to be taken by others, not if I can help it.
“I’d blame myself.” He stood up, walked to the other side of the tent, and put on his robe. “I don’t think your culture would approve. Maybe it would, I’m too confused to understand anything anymore. But, Sammy, I know mine wouldn’t.” Damn, why do I have to sound so priggish? “But the point is that if we do it now and we survive this Festival, we’ll never be able to be friends again. You know it and I know it. I’d rather have you as a friend in years to come than a lover for a few minutes.”
“You don’t love me, Geemie.” Sad, quiet tears were streaming down her cheeks. “You have never loved me.”
“I do love you,” he said miserably, trying vainly to sort out the demands of both cultures and of his own heart.
“It was the day you kissed me in the Body Institute that I rushed home to tell my mate that I was ready now to ignore the rules. He was so happy.” She covered herself with her hands, now shy and awkward. Hastily Seamus found a thin blanket to drape around her shoulders. “You made me love him, but you won’t love me.”
“It’s because I do love you that I am saying no.”
And because you’re a damn fool, you moralistic idjit. You’ll never have a chance like this again.
She collapsed into his arms, now a chaste and exhausted child. Seamus crooned a lullaby so that she might sleep for a little while.
She’s the blackberry flower,
the fine raspberry flower,
she’s the plant of best breeding
—your eyes could behold:
she’s my darling and dear,
my fresh apple-tree flower
she is Summer in the cold
—between Christmas and Easter.
He was about to waken her and send her back to the harvest work when the police arrived.
20
“Seamus Finnbar O’Neill, you are the prize idjit of all human history!”
’Tis herself! Glory be to God, why do women always have to wake me up? Where am I? It’s cold and hard here—not at all comfortable. He turned over to go back to sleep.
“In addition to that,” the voice was relentless, “you are a blatherskite, a flannel-mouth, a scapegrace, a coward, a gombeen man, a disgrace to your regiment and to Iona, and one of the biggest fools God ever permitted to exist!”
“‘Tis yourself,” Seamus said weakly, opening one eye and then closing it. “’Tis your mirror-self. Faith, woman, this must be the distance record for such spookiness.” He pulled himself up to lean on one elbow. He looked around for the source of her voice.
“You’ll be silent until I’m finished,” she ordered imperiously. “You have failed in everything you were assigned to do. When the disciplinary board in the monastery gets through with you, there will be not one regiment in the whole galaxy that will take you in as a potato peeler.”
I’m in trouble, all right. Still, it was best, when dealing with herself, to permit her to vent her anger. Then she became much more reasonable. “Sure now, what did I do wrong?” he pleaded in the direction of something that glowed eerily in the corner of the room.
“What did you do wrong?” The voice became shrill. “Are you such a fool that you don’t know? You should ask what you did right; that question I can answer quickly: Seamus O’Neill, you did nothing right, absolutely nothing.”
The glow at the corner of the room coalesced for an instant into an astral body that flickered in the gloom of the place. Strong emotion interfered with astral projection. Her Ladyship would have to contain her temper or she would be back on Iona. That would be nice. Seamus closed his eyes again and sighed, “Faith, I couldn’t have been all that bad.”
She recited: “You interjected yourself into their political affairs; you fought in their domestic wars; you killed their Fourth Secretary, who for all his faults was the one person still capable of governing; you got rid of the bungler Narth and replaced him with Popilo, who is a military genius, his army is set to attack in three days; you supported a crackpot revolutionary movement made up of a bunch of children; you stole goods from one of their forts; you seduced their women, some of them little more than schoolgirls. Do you want more? Zylong was in trouble; Zylong is in much worse trouble now, thanks to you.”
Seamus braved saying something in his own defense. “They seduced me.”
“I trust you will concede me some expertise in the subject of what affects women.” Her lips were thin and menacing, her eyes shooting ice-cold sparks. “Seamus, you are not merely an incorrigible womanizer, you are an inept one—which is worse. You began to flirt with that poor thing from the first minute you set eyes on her. What did you expect to happen in a repressed culture like this when a great, red-bearded godlike idjit appears? You are such an incurable seducer that you didn’t even know you were doing it.” She finished as though she were a prosecutor before a jury, folding her arms in satisfaction at the damning case she had presented.
“I didn’t realize what was happening.” Why am I whining like a little boy?
“You’re too dumb to know what you’re doing. Those women should never have got past the door of your tent. You knew the strain they were under; still, you not only let them in, you encouraged them with songs and drink.”
“Sure, I was tired and lonely. And anyway, I didn’t take her.”
“No, you merely tease her and then break her heart.”
“Don’t tell me that morality never is better than morality late,” he began to argue his case. It called for a crafty approach. Use the woman’s own words against her.
“Tell that to the court-martial board. Or tell it to the poor woman down in the bottom of this infernal prison, hysterical with self-loathing. Poor heathen. ‘Tis not Samaritha’s fault, ‘tis yours. They’re going to execute her the day after tomorrow. Why didn’t you have sense enough to send her promptly on her way? They’ve got some indecent pagan notions about how to kill adulteresses. Because of your stupidity she will be cruelly tortured for a crime she didn’t commit. You should have known they’d be watching your tent. You might tell her before she goes up there to be cut apart that you were tired and lonely.”
O’Neill looked wildly around him and realized he was in a small metal cell. He leaped up and shouted, “Deirdre, you’ve got to get me out of here!”
“You will be pleased to know that Marjetta and your young rebel friends are also here in this prison. The police put a psychic probe on you.”
“Margie?”
“Of course they have her too. I believe they have some special plans for her.”
“Deirdre, I wish I were dead,” he moaned.
“You won’t get off that easily,” she said triumphantly, brandishing a delicate accusing finger. “The wise men on the Committee are going to ship you off the planet tomorrow morning before the Festival begins. They want no part of you. So, whether we like it or not, we get you back.”
“Good God, Deirdre, is there nothing to be done?”
“You are beyond redemption, Seamus O’Neill. You destroy people’s lives. You intervene in a dying culture and aggravate the situation; then all you can do is ask if there is nothing to be done.” Again the pose of the successful prosecutor.
“What can we do?” he begged. If herself is putting on such a show to make me feel guilty, then there’s still a chance.
“The holy saints Brigid, Patrick, Brendan, and Columcile give me control of my temp
er. What is to be done? Why, what else but get those people out of here and go ahead with your mad plot to take over this planet. If it works, then they can invite us to land. If it doesn’t, well, we’ll have a nice Requiem Mass for you, idjit.”
Maybe he was not in as much trouble as he might have been. “What did you think of herself?” he ventured quietly.
“What? Oh, you mean your … er … proper woman. Well, she’s a pretty wee lass, I suppose. In fact, she’s much too good for the likes of you. We’d just as soon take her and leave you here.”
“She seduced me, you know.” I’ll see how far that defense can be played. “Sure wasn’t herself after admitting it.”
“That’s what the man always says.”
Ah, but you don’t deny that the woman is a handful altogether. I’m betting there. He ventured, “You should give me credit for good taste.”
“More than I’d give her, God knows.”
“And we are properly married. Canon Law says—”
“The divil quotes scripture—” she dismissed his argument with a disgusted wave of her elegant hand “—and Seamus O’Neill, gombeen man extraordinaire, quotes canon law.”
As the Captain Abbess calmed down, her image became more defined. Seamus had the sense of talking with a real person instead of a ghostly image.
“Podraig has revised his estimates. He says now that there is only one chance in ten thousand that the Zylongian society can survive the Festival in its present structure. He will give you one-in-two odds that it doesn’t survive the first day. We do not yet know what combination of biological, physical, and cultural forces are at work in this frenzy—we told you that before. It is of such intensity that its force in the early days will be more than enough to tear the society apart. The Hooded Ones have grown in number. The psychopathic spirit that animates them is infecting the broader society. I do not like being here even in out-of-body mode; it is a pagan, indecent, heathen place. The population will run amok tomorrow morning when the wind blows. The day after, the mountain army will sweep across the River and destroy what’s left. Podraig says it is likely to capture the City unless something intervenes.” She shrugged. “If you establish even temporary control, you may find allies.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“None, Seamus. I’ll cut a corner or two if I have to, but we cannot intervene directly in the end of this culture. We have no right to play God to these people. If we can help afterward, we will. If worse comes to worst, I’ll try to get you and your Marjetta off the planet. I’ll not endanger the ship or the pilgrimage to do it.”
“You do like my woman, then?” He was like a child eager for approval.
“You idjit! Why must you make me angry? The holy saints know I have done my best to keep my temper under control. Yes, I do like the wee leprechaun child. Everyone on Iona who has had contact with her adores her. Now get her out of this prison! The guards here are lax. The lass is on the floor below, two cells closer to the stairs than yours. Jesus and Mary be with you. Now move, you idjit!”
Her Eminence faded out, then in once again. “You’ll marry the poor thing, do you hear me, you scoundrel?”
“Woman, I will. In fact, I have. I have no intention of doing anything else.”
She paid him no heed. “We’ll stand for nothing else from you.”
“I told you, I’ve made up my mind to do it. I don’t need to be told by you what to do.” He was getting angry, his pride and confidence returning.
“Don’t try changing your mind, either.” She was gone, with the last word as always.
Then she reappeared. “And herself expecting a child too.”
“So soon!”
“You wouldn’t leave the poor thing alone.” This time she vanished for good, having delivered at the very end the essence of her message.
O’Neill grinned. A wee one is it? Well, now there is something more for which to fight.
The cell was small, square—a cube actually, nearly as high as it was wide. In one wall was a small alloy door or panel that slid into the wall to open. Through the small window, he could see two guards sitting and talking to each other at a small table just in front of his cell. His captors had allowed him to dress before taking him to jail. He removed his robe and cloak, arranged the latter in the far corner of the cell to resemble a form, after which he stood by the side of the panel uttering a low moaning that he gradually intensified until it reached banshee proportions. The panel slid back and one startled guard rushed into the room. O’Neill tripped him and simultaneously flung his robe over the second guard. Before either guard recovered, he had them both bound and gagged in the corner of his cell.
He paused at the head of the staircase to consider the situation. The Festival frenzy was about to begin; he didn’t have the pills yet. He couldn’t possibly handle his Zylongi comrades and get the pills too. They were much safer in jail. Quickly he mounted the stairs, disposing efficiently of two more guards who met him at the corner of a stair landing.
At street level, the narrow back streets that led into the plazas were practically deserted. There was a small hovercraft at the place Margie had designated. As he sped through the City toward the wall, he caught glimpses of crowds of people in the plazas milling around. There were fights between small groups and individuals in the side streets. Zylong was deteriorating, though its Festival did not begin until the morning.
He sped over the wall (no obstacle to the hovercraft—it just soared over it) and out toward the River and the now harvested fields. Full speed to the Dev and those blessed pills. The predecessors of this crowd must have been real hopheads, with all the drugs they used in this culture. He was worried and preoccupied. The jungle path when he found it was shadowed by tall overhanging trees. He never saw the huge reptile ambling across the path until he hit it.
21
“So—” Narth leered like villains are supposed to leer “—we meet again, Commandant O’Neill.”
Trussed up like a sack of praties with a dozen hordi spears pointed at his gut, Seamus O’Neill was not inclined to wit.
“The next time I’ll make sure you’re dead.”
Narth’s enormous stomach rolled as he laughed. “You amuse me, Taran. I might just keep you alive long enough to watch the destruction of the City. It would be pleasant to watch you as my warriors dispatch—slowly and lovingly, of course—your friends, particularly that delightful woman you seem to have taken for your own.”
Standard bad-guy threats. But how does the hero—me, that is—escape?
The dinosaur had fled terrified into the jungle. Seamus unfortunately had banged his head at the end of his spectacular flight from the hovercraft to the ground.
When he regained consciousness, he set to work straightening the metal sheets on which the machine rode. It was hot, difficult work which tore at his hands and wearied his arms. Finally, just as he was about to test the machine to see if it would work, the hordi pounced on him, their clawing hands like a hundred little bugs. They dragged him to the ground and sat on him while they tied him up, clicking and grunting triumphantly. Then they hauled him off, bruised and bleeding and deprived of all his dignity, to Narth’s encampment in a jungleside meadow that was dangerously close to the Dev’s landing site.
Had they found his ship and destroyed it and the precious medicine?
As he considered the camp and the thousands of well-disciplined troops in crimson uniforms with vast crimson banners, O’Neill realized that the question might be pointless. This army might not be stopped by dubious and ancient laser cannons. Certainly there was nothing he had seen in the City that could match the organization and efficiency of Narth’s forces.
“Impressed, O’Neill?”
“No combat experience,” he said hopefully. “They’d break and run at the first sign of competent opposition.”
“Which we don’t have here. I know. I organized the defense plans. They are folly, but it is all those senile fools would permit. As for th
e guns, they might just as well explode and destroy the City as harm my troops.”
“You’d better hope they do. Otherwise this crowd will scramble back to the hills as fast as they can run.”
“Care to wager?” he sneered.
Ah, he is not all that confident. But neither am I. The man is a genius to have pulled all of this together. If he weren’t mostly round the bend altogether, he might be unbeatable.
But that doesn’t get the hero out of the hands of the villain, does it?
Much more dangerous than Narth was his second-in-command, Popilo, Narth’s rumored successor. A tall, thin, mystical-eyed fellow with a lean fanatic’s face, Popilo was the ascetic Merlin to Narth’s frothing King Arthur. He might not be a genius at organizing this weird assembly of mutants, savages, and exiles, but he would be ruthless in using it to destroy everyone he hated, which seemed to be just about everyone.
“Kill him now,” he said coldly. “His talk is dangerous.”
If it were up to Popilo, Seamus O’Neill would have been fed to the eager hordi on arrival.
“Let us first see about the Iona. We can listen to it, but we cannot speak to it. Moreover, I do not understand this strange Spacegael you talk, with its strong mixture of Proto-English. It may be that we can make some arrangement with your masters, Major O’Neill.”
“Might it now?”
“Bring him to the tent,” Narth barked at the two one-eyed, three-armed giants who were in charge of fending off the hungry hordi.
O’Neill was dragged to the tent. Inside was a very ancient transceiver system, powered by a liquid-fuel generator. A tank of fuel rested against the generator. Twenty-second-century communication equipment in a world where solar batteries had not been invented.
“An old bugger.” O’Neill saw, very dimly through a dark cave, the way out.
“Can you make it send as well as receive? Or do not Majors in the Wild Geese have such skills?”
“Of course we do,” Seamus lied. “But ‘tis a real old machine. I’ll have to tinker with it.”
The Final Planet Page 24
