On the fourth day, they spotted the unicopter from a long way off and made their way toward it. It had come much further than Steve had expected. With sinking heart he realized that Tobias Whiting, if he escaped the crash-landing without injury, must surely have reached the Kumaji encampment by now.
"It doesn't seem badly damaged," Mary said.
The platform had buckled slightly, the 'copter was tilted over, one of the rotors twisted, its end buried in sand. Tobias Whiting wasn't there.
"No," Steve said. "It's hardly damaged at all. Your father got out of it all right."
"To go—to them?"
"I think so, Mary. I don't want to pass judgment until we're sure. I'm sorry."
"Oh, Steve! Steve! What will we do? What can we do?"
"Find him, if it isn't too late. Come on."
"North?"
"North."
"And if by some miracle we find him?"
Steve said nothing. The answer—capture or death—was obvious. But you couldn't tell that to a traitor's daughter, could you?
As it turned out, they did not find Tobias Whiting through their own efforts. Half an hour after setting out from the unicopter, they were spotted by a roving band of Kumajis, who came streaking toward them on their thlots. Mary raised her atorifle, but Steve struck the barrel aside. "They'd kill us," he said. "We can only surrender."
They were hobbled and led painfully across the sand. They were taken that way to a small Kumaji encampment, and thrust within a circular tent.
Tobias Whiting was in there.
* * * *
"Mary!" he cried. "My God! Mary...."
"We came for you, Dad," she said coldly. "To stop you. To ... to kill you if necessary."
"Mary...."
"Oh, Dad, why did you do it? Why?"
"We couldn't start all over again, could we? You have a right to live the sort of life I planned for you. You...."
"Whiting," Steve said, "did you tell them yet?"
"No. No, I haven't. I have information to trade, sure. But I want to make sure it's going to the right people. I want to get our...."
"Dad! Our money, and all those deaths?"
"It doesn't matter now. I—I had changed my mind, Mary. Truly. But now, now that you're a prisoner, what if I don't talk? Don't you see, they'll torture you. They'll make you talk. And that way—we get nothing. I couldn't stand to see them hurt you."
"They can do—what they think they have to do. I'll tell them nothing."
"You won't have to," Whiting said. "I'll tell them when we reach the larger settlement. They're taking us there tomorrow, they told me."
"Then we've got to get out of here tonight," Steve said.
The low sun cast the shadow of their guard against the thlotskin wall of their tent. He was a single man, armed with a long, pike-like weapon. When darkness came, if the guard were not increased....
They were brought a pasty gruel for their supper, and ate in silence and distaste, ate because they needed the strength. Mary said, "Dad, I don't want you to tell them anything. Dad, please. If you thought you were doing it for me...."
"I've made up my mind," Tobias Whiting said.
Mary turned to Steve, in despair. "Steve," she said. "Steve. Do—whatever you have to do. I—I'll understand."
Steve didn't answer her. Wasn't Whiting right now? he thought. If Steve silenced him, wouldn't the Kumaji torture them for the information? Steve could stand up to it perhaps—but he couldn't stand to see them hurt Mary. He'd talk if they did that....
Then silencing Whiting wasn't the answer. But the Kumajis had one willing prisoner and two unwilling ones. They knew that. If the willing one yelled for help but the yelling was kept to a minimum so only one guard, the man outside, came....
* * * *
Darkness in the Kumaji encampment.
Far off, a lone tribesman singing a chant old as the desert.
"Are you asleep?" Mary asked.
"No," Steve said.
"Dad is. Listen to the way he's breathing—like a baby. As if—as if he wasn't going to betray all our people. Oh, I hate him, I hate him!"
Steve crawled to where the older man was sleeping. Tobias Whiting's voice surprised him. "I'm not asleep. I was thinking. I—"
"I'm going to kill you," Steve said very softly, and sprang at Whiting. He paused, though. It was a calculated pause, and Whiting cried out as Steve had hoped he would. Then his hands found the older man's throat and closed there—not to kill him but to keep him from crying out again.
Sand stirred, the tentflap lifted, and a bulky figure rushed inside. Steve got up, met him halfway, felt the jarring contact of their bodies. The pike came up dimly in the darkness, the point scraping against Steve's ribs as the guard lunged awkwardly. Steve's fingers sought the thick-muscled neck, clamped there—squeezing.
The guard writhed. His feet drummed the sand. With one hand he stabbed out wildly with the unwieldy pike. There was a cry from Mary and the guard managed a low squawking noise. Outside, the rest of the camp seemed undisturbed. There was death in Steve's strong tightening fingers. There had to be death there. Death for the Kumaji guard—or death for the fleeing Earthmen, who had lost one colony and must seek another.
* * * *
They fell together on the sand, the guard still struggling. Steve couldn't release his throat to grab the pike. The guard stabbed out awkwardly, blindly with it, kicking up sand. Then Tobias Whiting moaned, but Steve hardly heard him.
When the guard's legs stopped drumming, Steve released him. The man was either dead or so close to death that he would be out for hours. Steve had never killed a man before, had never in violence and with intent to kill attacked a man....
"Steve!"
It was Mary, calling his name and crying.
"It's Dad. Dad was—hit. The pike, a wild stab. He's hit bad—"
Steve crawled over to them. It was very dark. He could barely make out Tobias Whiting's pain-contorted face.
"My stomach," Whiting said, gasping for breath. "The pain...."
Steve probed with his hands, found the wound. Blood was rushing out. He couldn't stop it and he knew it and he thought Whiting knew it too. He touched Mary's hand, and held it. Mary sobbed against him, crying softly.
"You two ..." Whiting gasped. "You two ... Mary, Mary girl. Is—he—what you want?"
"Yes, Dad. Oh, yes!"
"You can get her out of here, Cantwell?"
"I think so," Steve said.
"Then go. Go while you can. I'll tell them—due south. The Earthmen are heading due south. They'll go—south. They won't find the caravan. You'll—all—get away. If it's—what you want, Mary."
She leaned away from Steve, kissing her father. She asked Steve: "Isn't there anything we can do for him?"
Steve shook his head. "But he's got to live long enough to tell them, to deceive them."
"I'll live long enough," Whiting said, and Steve knew then that he would. "Luck to—all of you. From a—very foolish—man...."
* * * *
Steve took Mary's hand and pulled her out into the hot, dark, wind-blown night. He carried the dead Kumaji's pike and they slipped across the sand to where the thlots were hobbled for the night. He hardly remembered the rest of it. There was violence and death, but necessary death. He killed a man with the pike, and unhobbled one of the thlots. The animal screamed and two more Kumajis came sleepily through the night to see what was the matter. With the long edge of the pike's blade he decapitated one of them. He slammed the shaft of the weapon across the other's face, probably breaking his jaw. The camp was in a turmoil. In the darkness he flung Mary on the thlot's bare back in front of him, and they glided off across the sand.
Pursuit was disorganized—and unsuccessful. It was too dark for effective pursuit, as Steve had hoped it would be. They rode swiftly all night and continued riding with the dawn. They could have gone in any direction. The wind-driven sand would obliterate their trail.
Two days later they r
eached the caravan. As they rode up, Mary said, "Steve, do you have to tell them?"
"We can tell them this," Steve said. "Your father died a hero's death, sending the Kumajis off in the wrong direction."
"And not—not what he'd planned to do at first."
"No. We'll tell them that was his intention all the while. A man can make a mistake, can't he?"
"I love you, Steve. I love you."
Then they rode down on the caravan. Somehow Steve knew they would all reach Oasis City in safety.
With Mary he would find a new world out in the vastness of space.
THE ONE AND THE MANY
Originally published in If World's of Science Fiction, July 1952
There are some who tell me it is a foolish war we fight. My brother told me that, for one, back in the Sunset Country. But then, my brother is lame and good for nothing but drawing pictures of the stars. He connects them with lines, like a child's puzzle, and so makes star-pictures. He has fish stars, archer stars, hunter stars. That, I would say, is what is foolish.
Perhaps that is what started it all. I was looking at the stars, trying to see the pictures, when I should have been minding my sentry post. They took me like a baby, like a tot not yet given to the wearing of clothing. The hand came out of the darkness and clamped over my mouth, and I ceased my struggling when I felt a sharp blade pricking at the small of my back.
At first I feared that they would slay the entire camp as it slept and I cursed my brother for his star-pictures, cursed our leader who had sent us here, twenty archers, against the Onist outpost on our country's border. But the Onists had other ideas. They took me away. I had to admire their vitality, because all night we ran through the silent woodlands, and they seemed tireless. I could maintain their pace, of course: but I'm a Pluralist.
I could see their village from a long way off, its night fires glowing in the dark. It was only then that we slowed our pace. Soon we entered the place, a roughly circular area within a stockade, and my captors thrust me within a hut. I couldn't do much worrying about tomorrow, not when I was so tired. I slept.
I dreamed a stupid dream about the Onist beliefs, the beliefs of an unimaginative people who could picture one Maker and one Maker only. I must have chuckled in my sleep.
* * * *
"You're awake."
A brilliant statement, that—because I had sat up, squinted into the bright sunlight streaming in through the doorway, yawned and stretched. The Onists, I tell you, lack imagination.
The girl who spoke was a pretty enough little thing for an Onist. She smiled, showing even white teeth. "Do you Pluralists eat?"
I nodded and rubbed my belly. I was to have had dinner after my turn as sentry the night before, and now I felt like I could do justice to my portion even at one of the orgies for which the Onists are so famous.
"Bring on your food and I'll show you," I told her, and she turned her back to walk outside. It was early and the village seemed silent—surely they hadn't intended this one slim maid to guard me! Yet she seemed alone.
I leaped at her, circled her neck with my arm, prepared to make my exit. They would laugh around our fire when I told them of this fine example of the Onist lack of foresight....
Except that the girl yelped. Not loudly, but it was loud enough, and a big muscular Onist came striding in with his throwing spear. He backed me off into a corner, prodding my hungry belly with his weapon.
"Will you behave?"
* * * *
I told him I would and he backed outside, but this time I could see his shadow across the doorway.
The girl brought food and partook of it with me. I was surprised, because we Pluralists will not eat with an Onist out of choice. Well, I have said they are a strange people. Soon the girl stood up, patting her mouth daintily with a square of cloth, and in that, of course, she was trying to mime our graceful Pluralist women. "I suppose you think we are going to kill you," she said. Just like that.
"To tell you the truth, I haven't given it much thought. There isn't much I can do about it."
"Well, we're not. We could have done that back at your camp. We could have killed all of you. No, we want to show you something."
I had a ridiculous thought that they made star-pictures, too—even those who are not lame like my brother. I said, "Well, what will happen to me after you show me?"
She smiled. "You still think we're going to kill you. What's your name?"
I told her, but I thought: she can't even keep a conversation going without changing the subject.
"Jak," she repeated after me. "That's a common enough name. We have Jaks among our Onist people, you know."
"No, I didn't. But you probably copied it."
"I doubt that. We were here first, Jak. Our records say so. Probably, you once captured a man with that name, long ago, liked it, and took it for your people."
"You were here first!" I sneered. "Maybe that's what your records tell you, but it isn't so. Look: the Makers endowed us with life, then went away in to the sky. By mistake they left one idiot-Maker behind, and he had nothing to do. He made you Onists before he perished, and that is why you think there is only one Maker."
She seemed highly insulted. "Idiot-Maker? Idiot! There was only one Maker, ever, but because your minds cannot conceive of all that glory residing in one figure, you invented a score."
Now it was my turn to be indignant. "A score? Hundreds, you mean; thousands—more than there are leaves on the trees."
"Well, I won't argue with you. Our war has been arguing that point well enough." I was sorry she would not argue. She looked very pretty when she argued, her breasts heaving, her eyes sparkling fire.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Nari. My name is Nari. And don't tell me you had that name first!"
I smiled blandly. "Of course we did. I have an aunt, my mother's sister, who goes by that name. My brother's wife's cousin, also; but she is very ugly."
"And am I ugly?" Nari wanted to know. I guess in that sense at least, women are the same everywhere—Pluralist or Onist, it doesn't matter.
* * * *
I looked at her. I looked at her so hard that it made her blush, and then she looked even prettier. But I didn't tell her so.
"You will pass, for an Onist," I admitted. "I guess the Onists might consider you pretty; the Onist men might stamp their feet and shout if you go by—but then, they are Onists."
At that, she seemed on the verge of leaving my prison hut, but something made her change her mind. She stayed all morning and on into the afternoon. We argued all the time, except at midday, when she went outside to get our lunch. She stumbled a little and fell half against my shoulder. I moved toward her to hold her up, and it was the most natural thing in the world to take her in my arms and kiss her. She must have thought so, too; she responded beautifully—for an Onist.
After lunch, Nari did not mention the kiss, nor did I. It now seemed the most natural thing in the world not to talk about it. We argued some more, Nari defending her primitive beliefs, I trying to show her the light of truth. But it was no use: the war had been fought and the war would continue.
Later that day we set out. That came as a surprise to me, because I had taken it for granted that whatever the Onists wanted to show me was right here in this little village. A dozen of us went, and when we had been on the trail for some little time, Nari joined us, declaring that she wanted to see it again—whatever it was.
We went for three days, and although these Onists turned out to be better woodsmen than I had thought, still, they could not match the skill we Pluralists have mastered over the generations. I believe I could have escaped, had I wanted to; but I hardly seemed a prisoner of war, and besides, once or twice when we had lagged to the rear of the column, Nari stumbled against me like that day in the hut, and what could I do but kiss her?
It was another village we reached at the end of our march, much bigger than the first. Surprisingly, it looked a lot like a Pluralist town
, although it may only have seemed so because I had been out in the woodlands for three days. They took me straightways to the village square, and it was there that I saw the statue.
* * * *
These statues of the Makers are rare, and I was surprised to see one in an Onist village. I got on my knees at once to do it reverence. I realize it was impious to look up, but I did—I had to see if it were the genuine thing. And it was, to the last detail. Constructed of the forbidden substance known as metal, it towered three times a Pluralist's height, or three times an Onist's, for that matter. I have always wondered why the Makers did not create our ancestors in their own substance, as they had fashioned us in their image. But that is an impious thought.
A stern gray-haired Onist who said he was Nari's father took me aside afterwards. "Now, Jak," he asked me, "what can you say of what you have seen?"
I shrugged. "I can say that somehow you've found one of the Maker statues. What more?"
"It's one, is it not?"
"Of course it's one. They are rare, but I have seen three, all told, in Pluralist villages."
"And each time they were separate? You never saw a group?"
"No. No, I didn't."
He slapped his hands together triumphantly. "Then that proves it. Each is a copy of the original Maker, but there was only one. Otherwise you would have seen statues in groups. And that is why you are here, Jak: we want you to go back to your people and tell them what you saw."
I shook my head. "What you say isn't logical. So what if the statues are never in pairs or groups? We've only seen a few, when once there must have been many. Also, when your artists do their magic with dyes and create portraits, are they generally done one at a time or in groups?"
"One at a time, so the artist may capture the personality in each face, naturally. I have seen group portraits, but I think they are silly things."
"Exactly." Now I was triumphant. "Exactly as the Makers thought, which is why the statues are always single—"
The 8th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ™: Milton Lesser Page 27
