Seven Conquests

by Poul Anderson

  The jet walked around us and gave us a burst through the roof. I fired back without hitting anything. “Just a warning, Jack,” said the radioed voice.

  “Crack us up, and the girl goes too,” warned my pilot. “It’d be a shame to hurt her, and I don’t think her old man would appreciate your zeal.”

  “I always liked to take chances,” said Bob. “I think I got a way to force you down. But it’s dangerous.”

  “Go ahead and try, then,” said my pilot. “I’m a poor man and I need my success bonus.”

  The jet snarled around in a bone-cracking loop and came at us from the rear. I saw the tracer stream hosing from it, reaching for our control surfaces. It had to pull up in a few seconds, crossing over us, and I gave it a burst in the belly as it passed…My stomach muscles were knotted tight. I breathed deep and told them to relax. The jet came back for another try. That one chewed up our tailpipe a little. We lost speed and began to wobble in the air.

  ‘

  ‘The guy’s good,” said the doctor. “Maybe you better call it a day, Jack.”

  “You’re the boss, Chuck,” said the pilot to me.

  I looked out, considering. We were on the fringe of the roadless area that reaches north of Lake Superior into Canada; we’d been flying longer than I realized. Most of it is second growth now, having burned off during the Smashup when people were too busy staying alive to fight forest fires. But it’s still one of the biggest parks left on this continent.

  The other man could disable us and force a landing, just as he claimed. Thereafter, unless our reinforcements arrived before Dulac’s—which was improbable—we’d have to give up, since it would be illegal to use Marie for a shield. Prolonged resistance endangered everyone’s life to no obvious purpose, and there was no disgrace to surrendering before these odds. On the other hand, the success bonus would put me through a good many months of school, and success itself under difficult conditions would raise the fees I could charge. I am no altruist—1 want to be well-to-do, see my family grow up with room to breathe—but perhaps I also thought of funds for the psychodynamic research this poor crazy torn-up world so badly needs.

  “If you two are willing,” I said, “I have an idea.” Conversation was delayed while the jet made another pass at us. That time I was lucky and ripped up his rudder. He was still a tiger compared to us, but handled awkwardly now.

  “I thought of doing our snatch in reverse,” I said. “Skim each of these lakes that we go above. Pretty good tactics anyhow; at his speed, he’ll have to pull up sharp if he doesn’t want a dunk in the drink. On one of those skims, I’ll bail out with the girl. You lead him on for a while, then land if you want t<3. You’ll have nothing to conceal, and our planes’ll be along before he or his buddies can get rough with you. Nobody’s going to dogfight over an object of search which has disappeared.”

  “And how about you, Chuck?” asked the doctor.

  “Lots of hotels around here,” I said. “If you play it right, the Dulac gang will think we already transferred the kid somehow and were decoying them; I shouldn’t be molested. I can hoof it to one of the hotels and call HQ to send a plane after us.”

  “It sounds kind of impossible.”

  “A man might try,” I said. “Take the gun.”

  I went down into the hull and stuffed my pockets with foodbars. Boots for me and the girl I hung around my neck. She was warm again to the touch, breathing slowly and easily. I unstrapped her and dragged her over to the hatch and squatted there with her in my arms. Every time we swooped or swerved, she was flung against me, which was not a bit unpleasant. Even when a line of holes was stitched across the wall, I rather enjoyed myself.

  Choosing the third downward rush at random, I eased the hatch open. The water looked cold and brown; I thought it was filthy till I realized nobody had put bluing in it. A chill shriek of air buffeted up at us. Marie stirred and mumbled, her eyelids fluttering.

  When we were a yard above the lake, I stepped out.

  We went under like a dropped stone. I clawed my way back to the surface and raised Marie’s head. She began to squirm as consciousness returned. I shook the water from my eyes and stared out over the lake. It seemed horribly empty, rimmed in with pine and spruce, no trace of man except the two planes vanishing over the treetops. We’d been dropped close to shore and not seen. The opposing pilot had enough to think about, maneuvering his lame ship and crippling ours without killing our prisoner.

  A few strokes brought the muddy bottom under our feet. I waded to shore and dropped Marie Dulac on a dense brown carpet of needles. She choked, sputtered and sat up.

  “Here,” I said, extracting a pocket flask.

  She took it, shakily, and got down a gulp. Her eyes widened, and she was white and shivering, but I liked the fact that she didn’t scream.

  “Better get those wet clothes off,” I suggested. “They’ll dry pretty fast with this breeze, but you might catch cold from it.”

  “I’ve been immunized,” she said in a small hard voice. She sat for a while looking across the choppy dark bareness of the lake. “Where are we?”

  I shrugged. “Somewhere in the Arrowhead.”

  “I’ve been kidnapped, yes?” She had a faint, charming hint of Canuck accent.

  I bowed. “Charles Rheinbogen, at your service, miss. Now if you’ll excuse me…” I slipped off my garments. After a moment she did the same. Even at close range and without cosmetics, she was good-looking.

  “Do you have a cigarette?” she asked.

  “Mmmm…we’re not supposed to smoke here, you know. It’s summer and these trees haven’t been fireproofed.”

  “Please. I’ll be careful.”

  Swanson was always harping on the need for courtesy, among other professional standards. “Very well,” I smiled, and groped in my jacket where it lay. She moved closer. Her hand shot out and yanked my gun from its holster.

  I caught the movement in time to snatch it away from her. Her features blazed at me. I laughed, put the weapon aside, and got out the cigarettes. “Still want that smoke?” I queried.

  “Y…y-yes.” I struck it for her and she inhaled raggedly and coughed. She had probably just been introduced to the vice. Holy Hermes, patron of thieves, she could still be a virgin!

  “Look, Miss Dulac,” I said, “you have nothing to fear. You’re under the protection of the law and of my union. All we’re going to do is keep you for a while in a certain place with an adequate staff and good facilities. I’m sorry to put you to this indignity, but there was no choice.” I told her how the job had been carried out. “And I wouldn’t advise your trying to escape,” I finished. “It would be more trouble for you to do so than it would be for me to find you again. As far as that goes, if you haven’t had a lot of practice, a pistol is an awkward weapon and you’d be lucky to hit a whale broadside on.”

  She sat thinking for a while, her cheeks flushed and her dark head bent down. Somewhere a bird began chirping. Big puffy clouds drifted over us, the sun walking between them.

  “Why have you done this?” she asked finally.

  “Nothing personal about it. I was hired.”

  “By who?”

  “I can’t tell you that. Professional ethics.”

  “Ethics!” she spat. Her eyes lifted and challenged me.

  “Certainly. And be glad we have them, too. Otherwise anything could happen to you. As it is—”

  “I know!” She stood up and looked at me as if I’d crawled from beneath some abandoned garbage grinder. “It’s ethical to knock me out, and humiliate me, and endanger my life. It’s ethical to let my father worry himself sick—ugh!”

  I said in my best persuasive tone: “Back in the old days, before the Smashup and the reconstruction, some people used to kidnap rich men’s children—minors, even babies—for ransom. But being amateurs, they often panicked and murdered the victim.

  Now…well, if you and your father can both stand your being detained tor less than a year, you’ll
go free, unharmed, and he won’t have to yield a thing.”

  She looked thoughtful. “May I write him?” she asked.

  I was surprised. She actually, automatically talked of writing a letter instead of making a call. That convent must be a pretty old-fashioned sort of school; I’ll bet it even insisted the kids learn to spell the same way. “Sorry, no,” I answered.

  “But you don’t understand. I’ve hardly seen him, except on holidays, till last month. He’ll be ill with worry…about how I take this…if I could write and let him know I can stand it without mental damage-”

  “Exactly,” I said. “There’d be no point in snatching you if it didn’t bring pressure to bear on him. After all-”

  “Oh, be quiet!” she snarled, and turned her back.

  I hunkered on the soft brown needles and squinted across the lake and tried to figure her. She wasn’t reacting like others I’d heisted. Women, especially—either hysterical or “Goodness gracious, how thrilling!” Marie was concerned about her father and plain boiling mad about herself.

  After a while the neolon was dry, and we resumed our clothes and chewed a couple of foodbars. It was an effort for me to follow her casual example and drink from the lake…sure, unpolluted, but untreated, I had a queasy feeling afterward. The water tasted wild.

  “Well,” she said scornfully, “now what?”

  “I guess we strike out till we find a hotel or ranger station,” I decided. “We’ll head due north by the sun. Bound to find something.” As a bold bad bandit, I seemed to be cutting a rather lame figure.

  She nodded and we started walking. The trees were high and grave about us; the forest floor, springy and open, muffled our boots; sunlight spattered through the branches. Once I saw a live squirrel scoot up a tree. I nudged Marie and pointed it out. She nodded again, frigidly.

  To hell with her.

  The sun finally sank, molten gold behind the woods. A wind snickered in the pines. “Don’t tell me we’ll have to sleep out,” I groaned.

  “It seems that way.” Did I catch a bare overtone of gloat?

  Our majestic trees began to look like black witches, much too tall and thin. “Perhaps I made a mistake,” I said. “We could have waited where we were. My own people would probably have backtracked, looking for us, after they’d gotten rid of yours.”

  A smile curved her lips. “I thought of that,” she said.

  “Then for God’s sake why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You’re in charge, aren’t you?” I have never heard so demure a voice.

  Despite the law, I wanted to build a fire for the night. I’d have been glad to attract a ranger and pay the fine; at the very least, there would have been warmth. After some futile fumbling with green twigs, it was getting so dark that I quit. Marie had put her time to better use, cutting off slender spruce boughs with my pocketknife and making herself a bed. Now she stretched out on it, a blur in the dusk.

  “Hadn’t you better put that heap on top of you?” I asked. “It’s going to be cold.”

  “If you have only one cover, sleeping out, it works best beneath you. I have often been camping. You will learn.”

  “Hm,” I said. “Frankly, I thought you’d spent your time in the chilly cloisters.”

  She fairly threw at me: “It was like old days up there—a little village, honorable men who lived off the land, a few people who really cared to know things and knew learning means work. The sisters and the villagers were more human than you are, Mr. Rheinbogen!”

  I think I surprised her by taking no offense. “I realize that,” I said with a dim sadness. “They were…are…the lucky ones.”

  “So why do you live by killing and stealing and—”

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t bom to be a child of nature. And I have my own work to do, you know.”

  “Your world” That was all the good night I got.

  There was no danger that I would sleep so unwarily well that she could turn the tables. Not with the ground cold and damp and hard beneath me. I swore to myself and shifted position and counted up my separate aches. Ye gods—this was the natural life?

  Sometime after midnight, the monotonous clatter of my teeth must have lulled me. I was wakened from a fitful doze by a bang that shuddered in the earth. Fire burst over the sky, and then God opened the taps up yonder.

  We scrambled to what shelter we could find, under the heavy branches of a low spruce. The rain sheeted, blown on a skirl of wind, roaring in the needles, runneling off the ground. Lightning lit the world, a moment’s sharp white reality and then clamping darkness again, on and off, on and off; thunder went booming down endless hollow spaces.

  Marie huddled against me, not scared but seeking warmth. In a moment’s lividness I saw that she was smiling. And after a while I felt the same grin on my mouth. This was a wonder, it was the real cosmos breaking loose and roistering across the sky; I could not only realize intellectually, but feel, what ants we were, crawling over our mudball planet in a blaze of stars, and the knowledge was not terrifying but a sort of drunkenness.

  Presently the thunderstorm rolled beyond us and we stood in a slackening rain. It felt strangely gentle and soothing after that heavenly hooraw. We were wet and cold and hungry, but the show had been so good that we didn’t mind much.

  “You know,” I said, “now I understand what they mean when they talk about man being a forest animal. Ultimately all our art must go back to…this.”

  Marie’s voice came quizzical out of shadow, above the rain-plash: “You don’t talk like a gangster.”

  “How should I talk?” I chuckled. “We’re professional men, not walking cliches.”

  “Well—” surprisingly, she laughed—“you do seem to have more interests.”

  I explained that I was only a hood as a means of putting myself through school. “Someday I’m going to be a peaceful psychodynamics research man, looking for a scheme to reconcile the fact that seven and a half billion people on the Solar System’s single habitable planet need technology to stay alive, with the fact that technology requires them to live under conditions for which they aren’t biologically fitted. A better scheme than any we now have, I mean.” I looked out into the running gloom. “It can’t go on this way forever. The present system is frankly meant as a stopgap.”

  “My father…” She hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “My father said something like that a few days ago. He felt it was not right that we should have three separate houses while his workers were cooped into one room per family; and yet he would go crazy if he did not have space, and be unable to direct the chemicals union, and so there might be no artificial fertilizers and the workers would starve.”

  “Your father is a wise man,” I said.

  “But its so unfair!”

  “The universe never signed a contract with man requiring it to be fair. The old Jews knew that—read the Book of Job. Even you Christians don’t imagine the wrong wifi be redressed in this life.”

  She made no answer. We stood there while the rain ended and the clouds broke up and grayness became full sunrise. Then we had a bite to eat and started north again.

  My unaccustomed body was tired, sore, and chilled. But that disappeared as we walked through the morning. I breathed unfouled air and saw no swirl of gaping faces around me; a jay was a vivid streak of blue against the dark spruce-green, a brook belled its way over mossy stones, something which Marie called a thrush whistled liquidly, unseen.

  “This makes me wonder what possessed man to stop hunting and grub his food out of plowed dirt,” I said.

  Marie looked at me. We had not spoken for hours, but it had not been an altogether hostile silence. “The food was more secure…more certain,” she ventured.

  “Only in bad hunting territory,” I answered. “Which was where agricultural civilization was invented, of necessity.” I like to hear myself talk, and in any event I wanted to make a good impression on this girl, justify myself if possible.

&nb
sp; “Oh, there were reasons to become civilized, yes,” I continued. “The power, the gadgets…Nevertheless, for almost a million years man was a hunter. He’s evolved for it, biologically and psychologically.

  His eyes are most sensitive in the yellow-green, the color of sunlight filtered through leaves. His feet are meant for a yielding surface, it’s pavement that flattens them. His body wants to sleep when it’s eaten a full meal, and otherwise run around freely. His soul wants the excitement of the chase and the kill; it wants a feast afterward, rejoicing, the intimacy of a tribe…and the chance to be alone, too, sometimes. All this is instinctive.

  “None of him wants to be crowded together, and chained to one tiny spot of the earth’s surface, and be an anonymous unit, bossed and herded and jammed into an iron desert of a city, subordinating food and sleep and digestion and love and play to a single dreary job. He’s not built for it, his whole organism revolts against it. And yet nowadays we haven’t any choice, we can’t go back.”

  “Go back to the happy savage?” she jeered.

  “I’m not a Rousseauist,” I said. “The savage does have an impoverished, frightened, hard-working, short life. Civilization does have fantastically wonderful potentialities, if only we can realize them. But it has its drawbacks/too!”

  We went on in silence for a bit. Finally she shook her head. The breeze ruffled her short black hair.

  “What you call civilization isn’t,” she said. “You seem to think it means killing and stealing and tyranny.”

  “But it does,” I answered. “Civilization is an objective concept referring to a certain level of technology and a certain type of social organization. It has very good results—medical science, for example. It also has toxic by-products, the ones you mentioned.”

  “It doesn’t have to.”

  “I’m afraid it does. Read your history. By and large, it’s one long agony. Now, isn’t it?