Rogue Queen

by L. Sprague De Camp

  Iroedh got out the shovel and went to work on the camp’s least popular chore. Now she’d be cursed to the hell the ancient poems spoke of before she’d show Rhodh the machete. She would keep it hidden until she could find her own use for it.

  “Iroedh darling!” said the voice of young Vardh. “Don’t feel badly about Rhodh’s harsh words. I’m sure you did the best you could, but she’s in one of her worst humors. She’s had a bad day too.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “This morning after brunch she decided to see the leader of the men. First she put on her armor, though the day was hot and the men don’t seem to stand on much ceremony. But she told us to shut up; that she knew the right way for one leader to call upon another, and that men disapproved of nudity on formal occasions.

  “Then she went over and tried to get the first man she saw to take her to that Sub—you know, the fat brown one, the leader. When the man didn’t understand her she seemed to think she could make him understand by saying the same thing louder. Soon they were shouting, and the noise brought out the leader, who came down in the bucket to ask what was up. When he arrived Rhodh tried the same routine on him, with no more success. He indicated by sign language and his few words of Avtinyk that he was busy and she couldn’t enter the ship because it was being cleaned or something, and back he went in the bucket.

  “For a while she hung around watching the men. Some were scraping and painting the ship, which she could understand, but others were doing things that made no sense to her. Some were putting together that large magical device over there, the one with three petals sticking out from its top like a ripe pomuial. When she asked them what it was, one of them said something in his own language and flapped his arms like an ueg stallion in rut. So Rhodh thinks the device must have something to do with sex.

  “Others brought out a round thing about so big”—Vardh held her hands about two feet apart—“and very light—so light that when one of them tossed it into the air it flew up into the sky while another man looked at it through a magical device. Others pulled up weeds, or turned over stones to catch the creeping things under them, which Rhodh says is a silly way for adults to act, though Avpandh thinks they may be short of food.

  “One of them—the one with the almost-black skin and kinky hair—squatted in front of a box and turned little knobs on it, paying Rhodh no attention even when she spoke to him. After the third time with no response she prodded him in the buttocks with her spear. He leaped into the air with a yell and pointed a small gon at her, shouting in his own language. She gathered that he did not wish to be disturbed, and gave up trying to understand such unreasonable folk. She said the Terrans must have loaded all their crazy people into this ship and sent them off to get rid of them.”

  “She needn’t take out her irritation on me,” said Iroedh, proceeding determinedly with her work. She tried to make the sound Bloch had called whistling, but without success.

  “Oh, you’re right of course, darling,” said Vardh. “Here, let me help you. Isn’t is exciting, though? Like that oracular verse about

  “When the gods descend from heaven’s height

  Shall the seed be sown.”

  You could call these sky folk the gods, and their magical knowledge the seed. If we could only persuade them to sow it!”

  Iroedh said: “You’re always quoting those things. As I remember, the quatrain begins with the line: ‘When the Rogue Queen wears a crown of light,’ which is utter nonsense. Whoever heard of a rogue queen? It’s a contradiction in terms.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. That little Terran female might be considered as such, since she seems to have no harem of drones of her own.”

  A noise around the Paris attracted their attention. Bloch and Barbe Dulac had returned. There was a mutter of Terran speech and much coming and going in the hoist. Rhodh’s helmet towered amidst the crowd. Soon a group set out purposefully along the road toward Survivors’ Point.

  Iroedh finished her work and helped her juniors to prepare supper. Rhodh joined them for the meal. Nobody spoke much; Iroedh guessed that while the juniors sympathized with her, they did not dare show their feelings for fear of Rhodh’s wrath. Vardh, however, made hers plain by sitting close to Iroedh and passing her everything before she was even asked to.

  As they were washing up, the party that had set out for O’Mara’s body returned with it. The three juniors dropped their jobs to rush across the camp to see.

  Rhodh said in a low voice: “I’m sorry I spoke so harshly to you. Not but that you deserved chiding, but I let my petty emotions influence me. However, I still think it best if I deal with Blok tomorrow.”

  “It’s nothing,” said Iroedh, far from completely mollified. While Rhodh’s sense of duty would force her to admit a patent mistake, that was not enough to make people like her. Rhodh continued:

  “I do not mean to be hard on you, for at times you display a glimmering of the qualities of a proper worker. If you would only model yourself on me, you might rise in the Community as I am doing.”

  “Thank you, but I’ll continue to get along in my own inefficient way.”

  Iroedh stacked the last dish and walked off, knowing that by rejecting Rhodh’s overture she had made an implacable enemy. But she could not force herself to truckle to one she now so disliked, as Rhodh would have done in her place.

  Iroedh lay awake under her net, looking up at the stars through the meshes. Her mind roved in unaccustomed channels: If this was all the appreciation she got, why should she break her neck for her Community? Why not use her power to free Antis? Of course she would then have to do what she could for Elham, but Antis should come first. If that was anti-Communitarianism, let them make the most of it.

  Now, what could Bloch do for Antis? He couldn’t fly the Paris to Elham—at least not without the others’ knowledge—and if she took him in her chariot he would be gone at least five days, which wouldn’t do either. And when he got there, what? Not being even so strong as she, he could certainly not leap over the Community wall or batter down the stout gate. Perhaps he could blast it with his gun—but that would mean killing Elhamni, which Iroedh could not bring herself to contemplate.

  For that matter, Bloch impressed her as a somewhat timorous creature—wise and likable, but no second Idhios. In fact, her early estimation of the Terrans as super-beings, impervious to the bodily ills and weaknesses of character that beset common mortals like herself, had been revised drastically downward as a result of the trip to the Point. Why, despite their science, they were in some respects even less godlike than the Avtini!

  Half unconsciously she puckered her lips in one more effort to whistle. To her astonishment the sharp little sound rang out She had to repeat it before she was sure it came from her own mouth.

  She experimented. By moving her tongue back and forth, as Bloch had told her to do, she found she could vary the pitch. She tried to reproduce one of the few tunes she knew, that of the Song of Geyliad, which she had puzzled out from one of those manuscripts with the little black dots. The result might not have been recognized by the composer, but it pleased Iroedh.

  “What’s that funny noise?” came the sleepy voice of Avpandh.

  “Some creeping thing,” said the deeper tones of Rhodh. “Go to sleep.”

  Next morning Iroedh policed the camp until hardly a grass blade was out of place, then went to her chariot. From the chest containing the machete she took her writing tablet of vakhwil bark and wrote a concise account of the death of John O’Mara. She tore off and folded the top sheet, then sought out Vardh, who was gawking at the antics of the Terrans. Some of these were repairing pieces of machinery with magical devices that sparkled and shone.

  “Come with me,” said Iroedh. “Can you keep a secret, Vardh dearest?”

  “For you? Certainly!”

  “Even from Rhodh?”

  Vardh looked around nervously, but Rhodh was off somewhere with Bloch. “Especially from her. Though she’s our leade
r, I don’t really like her!”

  “Even from the Council?”

  Vardh’s eyes widened and her slit pupils dilated. “O-oh, this must be something simply awful! But for you I would.”

  “Even from the queen?”

  Vardh hesitated. “N—yes, I would. Not one of them is so nice as you. I love you almost as well as I do the Community.”

  Iroedh handed her the folded sheet. “This is what you must do: Hide this message, without looking at it, in your chariot. Should anything happen to me, like death or imprisonment, see it gets into the hands of Captain Subbarau. That is, if the sky ship is still here, or if I haven’t asked for the sheet back. And not a word to anybody!”

  “I understand, darling,” said Vardh.

  She hurried off. Iroedh approached the ship, where several men were putting the finishing touches on the machine with the “petals” that Rhodh had observed. Barbe Dulac stood there, alternately looking at the machine and at something on her finger.

  “May I see that?” said Iroedh.

  Barbe held up her left hand. For the first time Iroedh became really conscious of the fact that men had one more digit on each extremity than the Avtini. On the third finger sparkled a faceted gem, like those the ancients used to make, held in place by a slender ring of gray metal.

  “Winston gave it to me,” said Barbe.

  “What?”

  They struggled with each other’s languages until Iroedh understood and replied: “That was kind of him, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, more than that! It means we are engaged to be married!”

  “You mean one of those Terran mating contracts?”

  Barbe sighed. “Yes. The silly darling brought it all the way from Earth, but did not dare say anything because he was afraid of John O’Mara. He is a timid old rabbit, that one, but I love him even if he has no hair.”

  “That is nice.”

  “You have no idea! It is too bad you people do not have the love as we know it.”

  “Thank you, but if your kind of love makes people throw each other off cliffs, I’m satisfied with ours. By the way, when will you be fertilized? I should like to know how it is done.”

  Barbe emitted a sound of strangulation, followed by coughs and gasps, meanwhile turning almost as red as an Avtin. Iroedh, not knowing what she could have done to cause such a reaction, assumed Barbe had gotten something in her windpipe.

  Barbe straightened up and said: “Look! Kang is almost ready to take off!”

  “To take off what? His clothes?”

  “No, the helicopter.”

  “The hil—hiila—I meant to ask you, what is that thing for?”

  “It flies.”

  “It what?”

  “Flies through the air.” Barbe made motions.

  “Oh, now I see why Rhodh thought it was concerned with sex! Can all of you men drive it?”

  “No. Kang will not let anybody but himself and Winston fly it.”

  The little black-haired man with the flat yellow face got into the machine, and the men who had been working on it scattered.

  Iroedh said: “Daktablak flies it?”

  “He is a good flier, him.”

  “He must be brave after all.”

  “In some ways. The flying machines and the high places and the savage animals do not bother him, but any man who shouts at him can make him fold up. I shall have to supply the spine he lacks.”

  “The poor man has bones missing? He seems very active for a cripple—”

  Before Barbe could straighten out Iroedh again, the helicopter coughed and whirred. The petals spun faster and faster until their down draft blew clouds of dust radially outward into the faces of the spectators. Iroedh and Barbe backed up until they were out of the sandstorm. They stood watching the rotors, while Kang made his interminable adjustments, and struggled with the speech barrier. Iroedh found that, while Terran grammar and vocabulary came easily enough, she could not exactly imitate the men’s pronunciation, because her vocal organs differed from theirs.

  “What,” said Iroedh, “do you call this world?”

  “We have named it ‘Ormazd,’ and the two uninhabited planets of this system ‘Mithras’ and ‘Ahriman’ after the gods of an ancient Terran religion.”

  “Why don’t you use our own name?”

  “What is it?” asked Barbe.

  “We call it ‘Niond.’”

  “Does that mean ‘earth’ or ‘soil’?”

  “Why yes! How did you know?”

  “That is usually the case. Do all Communities call it by the same name?”

  “No. With the Arsuuni it is ‘Sveik.’”

  “Well, there you are. We might as well pick a name of our own as try to decide among those in use here.”

  The burbling whistle of the blades speeded up. The wind increased and the helicopter rose gently. Kang hovered a bit, then climbed until he was a mere speck and set off on a circuit of the valley.

  Iroedh asked: “How fast does that thing go?”

  Barbe shrugged. “Perhaps two hundred kilometers an hour. I do not know what that would be in your measurements, but it is ten or twenty times the speed you can run.”

  “Can it carry more than one?” Iroedh tried to calculate how long the round trip to Elham would take.

  “It has room for three, and can lift an even greater weight.”

  “Do you think I could ride in it?”

  Barbe looked wide-eyed at her companion. “You would not have fear?”

  “If it can carry you men it will carry me; and anyway I feel lucky. Could I?”

  “I should have to ask. They do not let Kang take us on what they call joy rides, because the fuel is limited. But you as a native of this world might be a special case. There is Lobos, the executive officer; I will ask him.”

  Iroedh watched, impassive outside but excited within, as her little human friend conversed with a small dark man, and both went to speak to Subbarau, who had likewise been a spectator.

  Barbe reported: “They say it will be all right if Kang thinks it safe.”

  Kang grew from a speck into a whirligig and thence into a helicopter settling down on his take-off spot. When he shut off the engine Barbe ran over to the machine and spoke to him; then beckoned Iroedh.

  The flat face grinned invitingly through the open door. Iroedh climbed in and settled herself as he directed her, but fumbled with her safety belt till he fastened it for her.

  Up they went. Iroedh, seeing the ground fall away, gripped her armrests until her knuckles faded from red to pale pink, the same terrible fear sweeping over her as in the hoist. She set her jaws, determined not to lose her brunch or otherwise disgrace her race before these formidable aliens.

  “You like?” said Kang.

  Iroedh forced herself to open her eyes and look out through the transparent covering of the machine. Little by little the heart-stopping fear subsided. She found herself looking down upon the shiny nose of the Paris, the whole sky ship appearing no bigger than one of the pins used in uintakh. Fear surged back with the thought that Kang might, with the unpredictability of Terrans, throw her out of the machine. But her good sense fought down the idea. If they had wanted to kill her they could have done so more easily. She stretched her lips in a smile—not her own kind, but the Terran tooth display that reminded her of a noag about to bite.

  “I—I—like,” she said.

  The ground now looked like a relief map, the people mere specks. The fear went away. Mount Wisgad smoked quietly in the distance.

  She asked in her fumbling English: “Can you down—lower—string—rope—for man up climb?”

  “Sure thing. Can haul three, four men up at once. Very strong machine. Made by Vought—damn good company.”

  Little by little a plan for rescuing Antis took form.

  Iroedh spent the afternoon studying an English primer Bloch had left with Barbe to give to her. Rhodh returned well before supper in an even worse humor than before, refusing to speak to
anyone. The sun was setting when Iroedh slipped out of the Avtiny camp and went purposefully over to the Paris.

  Bloch was pacing about the base of the space ship, holding a curious object in his teeth, something like a small spoon with a deep scoop-shaped bowl. A curl of smoke rose from the bowl.

  Iroedh said: “Hail, Daktablak! Do you then breathe fire like the monster worm Igog in the Tale of Mantes?”

  “No.” He explained the uses of tobacco.

  “Have you quarreled with Rhodh? She’s in a remarkable rage, even for her.”

  “Not exactly. She and I are not—how would you say it?—congenial. We experienced the same difficulty when she was here previously.”

  “What happened today?”

  “Well, first she talked too rapidly for me to comprehend her, and took it as an insult when I requested her to slow down. Then she proposed a deal to me: If I would intervene in your fool war, she would try to arrange for us to visit her Community, if her Council would assent. Did you tell her I had tendered such a proposal?”

  “No,” said Iroedh.

  “She seemed to think I had, and when I endeavored to explain why I could not she lectured me, waving her spear in my face, until I politely informed her I had my own work to do. And when I tried to collect some information from her she became uncommunicative. Well, it was altogether a pretty sticky day.”

  “I’m told you can drive the flying machine.”

  “That is correct.”

  “And that the machine can lift several people from the ground by means of a rope.”

  “Yes. In fact there is a rope ladder coiled up in a compartment in the bottom for rescue work. You push a lever and it falls out.”

  “It would be bad for you if Captain Subbarau heard the complete story of the death of O’Mara, wouldn’t it?”

  “Ssh! I thought we weren’t going to mention that?”

  “Not if you do what I ask.”

  “What is this? Blackmail?”

  “If that’s what you call it. I don’t wish to do it but I must to save my friend Antis.”

  “Who is that? A drone, from his name.”