Dare - rtf

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  R'li peered out into the darkness, past the blaze. The moon had not yet come up. Outside was a clear space of about twenty yards and then a towering pile of blocks.

  "I think it's time to tell you the true story of the Wiyr, or the horstels, or the cadmen, or the sirens and satyrs, or the dogeaters or any of the many names you call us. The story that your State and Church have hidden from you. Although, possibly, they may be ignorant of much of it themselves.

  "Jack, the Wiyr, as we call ourselves, that is, the People, also come from Earth."

  Jack did not reply.

  "It's true, Jack. Our ancestors were brought to this planet some four thousand years ago. Darian years, which closely correspond to Terrestrial years. At that time, the Arra had a flourishing colony on this planet. They abducted human beings from Earth and used them as slaves or servants. Not that they needed slaves to serve them, for their machines could do that. But they wanted other lower but intelligent beings as prestige items and as pets.

  "They also brought sapients from the planets of other stars. These were the ancestors of the present-day mandrakes and werewolves. The dragons have always been here. They were a primitive group that were too big and dangerous to be domesticated. So they were kept on a reservation.

  "About two thousand years ago another in­terstellar culture, the Egzwi, warred with the Arra. They used a weapon that exploded or disintegrated all surface iron. Also, I believe, certain other metals. The surviving Arra deserted their colony. The Egzwi never landed. And, of the four sapient species left behind, the human beings alone managed to struggle back out of savagery. We made certain of that. We hunted and harried the mandrakes and the werewolves, as you call them, until they survived only in mountainous areas we didn't want."

  "What proof do you have for this story?" Jack said. "If you're human, why do you have the horsetails and the yellow and orange eyes?"

  "One theory is that we were mutated by the radiations from the explosion of iron and other metals. Another is that the Arra deliberately mutated us. We do know that they bred us for certain physical qualities.

  "However, we also have our traditions. These might not be enough to prove what I say. Perhaps we could have come from a different planet. But there's another factor. Language."

  "Yours is absolutely different.''

  "Adult-talk, yes. That's Arra speech, which all slaves had to learn. It's a code or cliche language, or, better, a mnemonic tongue. You use brief code words that contain the meaning of whole sentences or phrases.

  "But child-talk is a descendant of the original speech we used on Earth. The slaves were allowed to use it among themselves, and they clung to it as a reminder of their once free estate. After the blowup, it came to be a marker of the distinction between the ruling class of the Wiyr and the others. You assumed that all horstels used adult-talk, but that's not true. It's spoken only by the aristocrats.

  "However, the important thing is that our child-talk and most of the languages used by the Earthlings who were dropped off by that later Arra ship. . . well, they come from the same root speech. Our scholars recorded them before English came to be the dominant, and then the only, language of the descen­dants of you tarrta, or latecomers. English, German, Icelandic, Spanish, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Al­banian, Gaelic Irish, Italian, Greek, and your liturgical language Latin. Only Turkish, Chinese, and Croatan seemed not to be related to yours."

  "I find that hard to believe," he said.

  "Darling, I would think you'd be eager to believe it! It proves our common origin."

  "I don't know. I can't see any similarity between English, horstel, and Latin. Except what the priests say we borrowed from Latin."

  "I'm not a scholar, either. But I know a little of it, and I can take you to learned men of my own people who know a lot. Besides, at two different times, priests of your own kind came to recognize the similarities. One was threatened with ex­communication if he didn't keep quiet. Another went cadmus."

  "All right. I'm not angry, as you seem to think. Just dazed."

  "Our scholars could give you hundreds of exam­ples. I'll give you a few. For instance, you have the insulting word swine. You've never seen the animal that was the original swine; neither have I. But it was a dirty nasty beast. Our word, with the same pejorative meaning, is suth. At the time of the blowup, it was sus. It's related to the Latin suinus and the German schwein. All three words came from the same word or related words, of the mother tongue.

  "Take O-Reg, the Blind King. O is a loanword from Arra. Originally, it stood for a whole phrase, the meaning of which had to do with a lack of foresight or insensitivity. But it means in child-talk, blind. Reg, however, was a word the Wiyr brought with them from Earth. It's related to the Latin rex, the genitive singular form of which is regis."

  "I don't see it."

  "Thrruk comes from the same ancestral form as your dragon, which you borrowed from the French, which got it from Latin, which borrowed it from Greek. Then there's our word for mother: metrra.

  "Oh, I could go on for quite a while, even with my limited knowledge. Let's see. What does were in werewolf mean?''

  "I never thought about it."

  "It means man. A werewolf is a manwolf. You tarrta called those creatures that because they seemed to look as if they're half-human and half-wolf. The point is, were is descended from the same common ancestor as the Latin vir, which means man and was once pronounced wir. Both words are cousins to wiyr, our name for man or folk or people.''

  "It's hard for me to believe."

  "I didn't either until they explained to me the system of sound changes that must have taken place among the various families of speech descended from the original. They had it all worked out. Not just for a few, which might be attributed to coincidence. No, for thousands."

  "For instance," Polly said, "their word for the male organ and ours for a male gaggler, and also for the bad word for the male organ, seem remarkably alike, don't you think?"

  "It's no coincidence," R'li said.

  "I always thought the priests said it was a horstel word, and that's why we shouldn't use it."

  Both R'li and Polly laughed. Jack was glad that he could step back into the darkness to hide his flush. He bumped into Mar-Kur; she rumbled; he stepped swiftly forward. The dragon hissed and rose as far as she could beneath the low ceiling.

  "Sssss! Silence! There's something out there!"

  The three fitted arrows to their bows and gazed out into the darkness and the flickering cast by the fire. "What do you think it is?" R'li said quietly.

  "I can't smell them, but I heard them. More than one. I wish I were out of this little hole. I feel trapped."

  There was a concert of screams, some yowls, and five or six dark bodies appeared before the opening. In the light of the fire were creatures with man-shaped bodies covered with long dark hair. Their massive arms were longer than a human being's, however, and their shoulders were much broader and their chests enormous.

  On top of a squat neck was a face covered with white hair. Their jaws were heavy and protruding, and their noses were huge and seemingly covered with cartilage or, perhaps, horn. The ears stood out at right angles to the heads and were almost square. The eyebrows were thick and black, contrasting with the white hair of the face. The eyes themselves were very large and orange in the reflection of the light, like an animal's.

  They thrust long wooden spears with fire-hardened points into the opening. Those inside released their bows; the arrows thudded into three chests. Then the things were gone.

  "Mandrakes!" R'li said.

  Mar-kuk said that she had to get out. She could not stand being caught inside. The others did not argue but moved around behind her. With one sweep of her tail she scattered the fire from the ledge and onto the ground outside. As swiftly as she could manage her great body, she squeezed through the opening. Halfway out, she bellowed as six dark bodies fell on her from above. She gave a kick and propelled herself the rest of the way, with the m
an­drakes clinging to her. Before rising, she rolled over and crushed two of the attackers. The others scram­bled away in time but returned at once to attack. They were joined by at least ten more running up from the shadows of the blocks, where they had been hiding.

  Jack Cage and the women shot whenever they had a chance. But Mar-Kuk whirled around so much and rushed back and forth so swiftly, they could get only three good attempts. Two struck their marks, though not fatally, for the mandrakes ran off howling.

  Suddenly the attackers had had enough, more than enough. They quit their futile stabbing with wooden spears or beating with clubs or biting with teeth, and fled. Mar-Kuk chased one group down the avenue formed by the piles of stone blocks. Jack could hear their screaming and the dragon's bellowings for some time. Then they faded into the distance.

  They took turns at sentinel duty. Mar-Kuk did not return until dawn. She looked tired but content and very well fed. When they continued their journey, she picked up one of the dead mandrakes, saying that she would keep it for breakfast the next day.

  All that day, with only several brief rests, they walked. By noon they had left the ruins behind them, and they now followed along the edge of the plateau. When dusk came, they had climbed down several hills and were halfway down the slope of a small mountain. R'li calculated that they could get to the bottom of the Argulh Valley by mid-afternoon of the next day.

  "It's at least sixty miles across, rough, and heavily wooded, as you saw from the plateau. It's infested with everything dangerous to man. Even the unicorns are bigger and more aggressive. But with Mar-Kuk along, I don't think we have too much to fear," R'li said.

  By noon of the third day, they were almost half­way across. Nothing had offered to molest them, and they had not even had to hunt for themselves. Mar-Kuk had cornered a unicorn in a little canyon and killed it for meat. They made a small fire on the bank of a wide, shallow stream and sat down to eat. Mar-Kuk shifted around uneasily for a few minutes, then said that she had to be going for a while.

  "Some of your sisters are in the neighborhood?" R'li said.

  "Yes. I want to gossip with them. Also, to tell them that they must spread the word that you are to be left alone. If they don't, they'll have me to deal with."

  "I hope she won't be gone long," R'li said. "But I'm afraid she will. Dragons chatter on as much as human females."

  An hour passed. Jack became impatient. R'li sat quietly, her eyes fixed on a stick set upright in the sand before her. Apparently she had gone into a trance. This irritated Jack because she refused to pay any attention to him then. Afterward, she could not explain to his satisfaction that she was thinking. Polly lay sprawled out in the grass, her arms behind her head, in a consciously provocative position. For the past few days, she had been eying him with an ex­pression that was anything but unreadable. Also, her comments had been getting bolder. R'li ignored both the looks and remarks. Jack, although he disliked Polly, even detested her, felt guilty. The rigors of the trip had not tired him so much that he did not feel an ever-increasing pressure. The lack of privacy and R'li's strange disinclination had prevented him from doing something about it.

  Once, when he was briefly alone with her, he had asked her why she was so cold.

  "I'm not. But I'm under a tabu for fourteen days. Every woman of the Wiyr observes chastity for that period, the time depending upon her birthday. It's in honor of the Goddess in her aspect of the divine huntress."

  Jack had thrown his hands up in the air. All his life he had lived with the cadmen, and yet he knew nothing of their ways.

  "What about me?" he had said. "Am I supposed to suffer during this holy observance?"

  "There's Polly."

  He was flabbergasted. "Do you mean that you wouldn't care?"

  "No. I'd care very much. But I'd never say anything about it. I'm forbidden to do so. And I'd understand. . . somewhat. . . I think."

  "I wouldn't touch that vicious little bitch if she were the last woman alive."

  R'li smiled. "You do exaggerate. And you un­derestimate your desires. Besides, it would then be your duty to propagate."

  Later, he decided that R'li could not actually com­pel him to practice chastity, but she had made it plain that she would resent it very much if he did not. Thank God, he told himself, he was not tempted. But he wished that Polly would not make it so obvious that she felt a strong need, too. He had reactions he could not help.

  Angry, he nudged R'li's buttock with his toe and said, "Let's get going. Mar-Kuk can trail us easily enough."

  R'li blinked her eyes and said, "Why the hurry?"

  Jack flicked a glance at Polly and said, "I just can't take this waiting. That's all.''

  R'li also looked at Polly, who had not changed her posture. She said, "Very well."

  A half hour later, Jack wished that he had exer­cised more control. The more distance they put be­tween themselves and Mar-Kuk, the more they in­creased their vulnerability. But he was too stubborn to admit that he had been wrong. Fifteen minutes later, he admitted to himself that it would be stupid to continue any longer.

  He stopped and said, "Let's wait for her here. I made a mistake."

  The women did not comment. R'li fixed the stick in the soft ground and sat down cross-legged to stare at its tip. Polly resumed her legs-open, hands-beneath-her-head position. They were back where they had been, except that now their protector was farther away. He began pacing again.

  He stopped. Polly sat upright, her eyes wide, her head cocked. R'li came out of her trance. Somebody was running through the brush and making no at­tempt to be silent. Mar-Kuk?

  A male horstel ran out of the forest and continued across the stream. He was about fifty yards away and did not see them.

  R'li said, "Mrrn!" as Jack recognized her brother.

  There was an explosion of gunfire. Halfway across the stream, Mrrn staggered and fell forward. He rose again, went a few steps, and fell face down in the water. His body began to float downstream.

  R'li had screamed when her brother was hit. Jack said, "Into the woods!"

  They picked up their weapons and bags and started to run toward the nearest trees. Before they reached them, they halted. Several men, all holding firearms, had stepped out. Among them was Chuckswilly.

  He smiled and said, "Your brother was looking for you, and we were trailing him. Now we should all be happy, for each found what he was seeking. Or am I wrong? Perhaps you aren't happy to see me?"

  "I thought I'd killed you," Jack said.

  "You did give me quite a bump on the head. I suf­fered from it the next few days while I was in the Slashlark jail."

  "Jail!"

  "Yes. The government had decided that the time wasn't ripe to attack the horstels. The Queen was angry about the Cage cadmi. She had me arrested, and I was to be put on trial as testimony to her good intentions toward the Wiyr. However, several of my friends broke into the jail late the third night and set me free. I decided that my usefulness was ended in Dyonisa, so I set out for Socinia, my native land. I ran into this patrol, and a little later, we encountered Mrrn and a couple of his friends. I imagine they were looking for you."

  Jack put his arm around R'li's waist and held her close to him. She was pale, and her face was set. Poor darling! To have lost her father and brother in such a short time!

  "You're a Socinian?" he said.

  "An agent to provoke war between the horstel and Dyonisan. I may have seemed to fail at your farm, but I didn't. Every cadmus throughout the three nations is jumpy, ready to fight back. Other Socinians will cause more incidents. The whole con­tinent will explode. All lands except mine, of course. We'll be prepared to march in after man and cadman have decimated each other.

  "Now we must dispose of the problem you present. I'll be brief. Either you swear to go to Socinia, there to become citizens and to fight for it, or you die now."

  Several soldiers waded into the stream and dragged Mrrn onto the bank. He sat up and coughed until he had cl
eared the water from his nostrils and throat.

  The side of his head revealed blood seeping out from a shallow wound. The bullet had merely grazed his skull.

  Chuckswilly repeated the offer he had made to Jack, R'li, and Polly.

  Mrrn spat and said, "My sister and I prefer death!"

  "You're not very bright," Chuckswilly said. "If you were, you'd have promised to join us and then looked for a chance to escape later. But you're a horstel of the ruling class, and they don't lie. Or do they?"

  He said to R'li, "You can speak for yourself. You don't need to refuse simply because you are a Wiyr. Two of my men are of cadman descent. One is a hybrid. I'm a hybrid, too. Socinia is an example of the fact that the two cultures can fuse to make a har­monious third."

  "Why don't you let us go?" she answered. "We are on our way to the Valley of the Thrruk. We in­tend to live there in peace and raise our children there. We can't harm you."

  He raised his eyebrows and stroked his mustache. He grinned and said, "Live there in peace? Not for long. Socinia intends to conquer the valley, too. Af­ter we have disposed of Dyonisa, Croatania, and Farfrom."

  Scornfully she said, "It's too well defended. You could lose a hundred thousand, men and still not storm the pass!"

  "What's the matter with horstel espionage? Haven't you heard of our big guns and powerful shells? They make the Dyonisan artillery look like toys. And we have great balloons, propelled by motors, which can fly above the pass and bomb the valley out. Or descend and discharge troops so powerfully armed they'll cut down your fighters as a farmer scythes weeds."

  R'li gasped and clung to Jack. Chuckswilly said, "Well, which shall it be? You might as well know that if you refuse, you'll be turned over to my men. They're very horny just now; they've been in the wilderness too long."

  R'li asked for permission to speak to Jack privately. Chuckswilly agreed, but he had the hands of the two bound behind them and their ankles tied together.

  "What shall we do?" she said.

  "Agree to join. He himself said we'd probably do that and try to escape later."