[Jan Darzek 02] - Watchers of the Dark

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  “Water?”

  Darzek laughed. “We’ll stock that, too. And if we need more, every dwelling has a lovely aquaroom with a reserve of I don’t know how many thousands of gallons.”

  “All right. We’ll be prepared for a siege. Will it take that long to find out what you want to know?”

  “I don’t know,” Darzek said soberly. “No one has ever resisted the Dark before, so I have no idea what will happen. The more I learn about the Dark, the more confused I get. Why would any rational entity go tearing through the galaxy on an orgy of conquest, and then leave the conquered worlds to starve? The Dark doesn’t merely induce insanity—it is insanity. I can’t make any sense out of it.”

  “Those howling natives certainly didn’t make sense to me.”

  “If we could hold on here until they regain a measure of sanity, it would be a tremendous morale booster to the whole galaxy. A victory here could be the turning point. On the other hand, there aren’t enough of us to defend this place if the natives attack in force, even if their only weapons are their bare hands, and I hate to think what will happen if there are a few Eyes of Death among them. So I’m going to make a show of fighting. Perhaps I’ll learn . . . something . . .”

  “Have you learned a substitute for breakfast? No one on the Hesr has eaten since the day before yesterday. Your army will fight better on a full stomach.”

  “I’ll take it up with Gul Ceyh,” Darzek promised. “He’s appointed himself quartermaster general.”

  A few minutes later he sought out Miss Schlupe again and said remorsefully, “Schluppy, you just changed jobs. Behold the harvest of total automation. There isn’t a person in the entire trading community who knows how to cook!”

  Already exhausted, Darzek spent a frustrating, exhausting day dashing frantically from place to place, never quite finishing one task before he was urgently needed elsewhere. He inspected warehouses, browbeat balky traders into making plans and doing something about carrying them out, saw that the hilltop’s thick vegetation was cut and stacked in barricades, and organized the undertraders and youths into squads and platoons. Along the way he dealt with an unending succession of messengers who dashed up breathlessly for decisions on problems of truly Gordian perplexity.

  In one of the warehouses he found a stack of stout poles of unidentifiable wood, intended for an indiscernible purpose, and he armed a company of shock troops with them. No officer had ever commanded a more motley group, but they responded eagerly and learned quickly. Their attitude pleased Darzek, even though he could not watch their slithering, ambting, gamboling, shuffling, gliding, and skating charge without laughing.

  Gul Kaln’s unlimited resourcefulness provided Miss Schlupe with a makeshift kitchen, and she supervised an endless preparation of food with helpers drawn from every type of animate on the Hesr, who also served as tasters for their own kinds. Darzek inspected the place—once—and found its variegated outpourings astonishing and largely nauseous.

  When the turmoil had taken on a semblance of organization, Darzek slipped away to a warehouse at the center of Yorlez, cut a slit in an outside wall, and watched the natives. Their coarse shouts, their ferocious cries of “Grilf! Grilf!” carried only faintly and fitfully to the Hesr, but in the narrow defiles between buildings the clamor became terrifying. As they threshed and tore their way through the thick vegetation, Darzek watched with increasing perplexity. Ruefully he weighed his two critical mistakes: the first in trusting the natives, and the second in knowing so few of them. He should have lived and worked with them, instead of cutting a dazzling figure in trader society.

  But that could have been a worse mistake. Had he done so, would he now be sharing their hate-twisted frenzy and raising his own cries of Grilf?

  “What is the Dark?” he muttered.

  A panting messenger arrived to stammer out a more immediate problem, and he had to turn away.

  At the end of the day Darzek again sat in his garden, watching one of the last remaining groups of women and children waddle through the dusk to the nearest transmitter link with the spaceship. His supply problem was under control. His defense was organized and ready. Most important, his lines of retreat were secure. With their families in safety on the ship, and with transmitters spotted about the Hesr for instant use in case it became necessary to evacuate, the traders seemed much less frightened. Two or three of them even showed flashes of boldness.

  Miss Schlupe materialized out of the gathering night. “The power’s been cut off,” she announced.

  “We can do without it.”

  “When did you sleep last?”

  “On the spaceship,” Darzek admitted. “Last night, or yesterday, or maybe the night before. That must be what’s wrong with me. I’ve been trying to blame it on the Dark.”

  “If it isn’t what’s wrong with you, it soon will be.”

  “I’ll get to bed as soon as I’ve made the rounds,” he promised.

  The city below had receded into silent darkness. All seemed peaceful there. The night had stoppered up the natives’ frenzy, but it would go on fermenting, and perhaps, when the dawn released it, the explosion would follow.

  Darzek moved from post to post, exchanging banter with the sentries. Abruptly light flashed in a doorless opening, and a shadow loomed monstrously beside him. He whirled in alarm, but it was only Rhinzl, who chuckled softly.

  “Did I frighten you, Gul Darr?”

  “You startled me,” Darzek admitted. “If I’m flinching at shadows, I need sleep worse than I realized. Are there any natives about?”

  “None within the range of my vision. I do not expect them to come by night unless they bring lights, and then they themselves will give us warning. Have your sleep, and fear nothing. My nocturnals are placed so that no one can approach without their seeing.”

  “What is your opinion of what’s happened so far?”

  “Things have begun almost exactly as they did on Quarm, except that the Quarmers were active at night. This worked a hardship on most of the traders. The darkness has a property of magnifying the terrors of those who prefer the day.”

  “True,” Darzek agreed.

  “Have your sleep. I will send for you at once if you are needed.”

  “Thank you,” Darzek said.

  He found his bedroom crammed with crates of foul-smelling foodstuffs. There wasn’t sufficient space for lowering a hassock into a reclining position, so he made one into a chair and slept sitting up.

  It was late morning when he awakened. He strolled out into the sunshine and found Gul Azfel, who had charge of the morning watch, calmly scanning the horizon.

  “Greetings, Gul Darr,” Azfel said cheerfully. “Gula Schlu would not permit that I awaken you, so I could not report the beginning of my service as ordered.”

  “Is anything happening?”

  “They are burning a warehouse,” Azfel said, gesturing at a thin column of smoke. “I have been trying to identify it. I think it is E-Wusk’s.”

  Darzek started. “I’d forgotten E-Wusk. Did he leave as he had planned?”

  “He is gone,” Azfel said. “He did not confide his plans to me. His warehouse is empty, or there would be more smoke.”

  “I thought these buildings were fireproof.”

  “It requires special combustibles to ignite them, but when sufficient heat is applied they burn fiercely. And dangerously,”

  Azfel added, savoring the thought. “There will be many deaths among the natives.”

  Miss Schlupe sent over a basket of fresh fruit, and Darzek picked out a vantage point where he could look down at the city and seated himself to eat his breakfast. Occasionally he could see the mindless surges of the mobs, as they threshed through the vegetation or charged blindly along paths that had already been beaten clear. Their cries billowed up loud
er when they were hot on the scent of something—a foreigner’s home, a warehouse, perhaps his person. Darzek had made his invitation general, but so awed by the Hesr were the lesser traders and factors and peddlers that few had responded.

  He turned to Azfel, who waited respectfully at his elbow. “Did anything happen during the night?”

  “Gul Rhinzl said not.”

  “Is this the way it went on Quarm?”

  “Not at all. There the natives had easy access to our dwellings. They filled the ovals the first night, and from that time we had no food and were isolated from each other when the natives were about.”

  “And an empty stomach, like the night, magnifies terrors,” Darzek murmured. “Is everyone getting enough to eat?”

  “Perhaps some are not getting as much as they would like, but no one is hungry.”

  “When will the natives come here?”

  “Today,” Azfel said confidently. “Their anger is feeding on the warehouses now. It grows as it feeds, and the more it grows the more food it demands. I expect them today.”

  “Then I’d better make certain that we’re ready for them.”

  He moved off, carrying his breakfast with him, and Azfel slithered along at his side.

  By late afternoon a pall of smoke hung over the city, and separate mobs, drifting about aimlessly, merged, meandered closer to the Hesr, merged with other mobs. They converged from a dozen directions to stand at the edge of the city looking up at the hilltop.

  “A thousand of them, at least,” Darzek muttered.

  The cries of “Grilf!” crescendoed to a peak of frenzy, and the natives charged.

  For a hundred yards they moved at top speed. Then, as the slope became steeper, they gradually slowed to a panting walk, and their cries faded to piping gasps. They doggedly continued to stagger upward, but only a small vanguard approached the top; the rest were scattered over the face of the hill.

  Darzek moved his shock troops forward and held them poised at the barricade. They waited quietly with leveled poles, and a thin line of natives, enormous ears drooping with exhaustion, gathered twenty yards below and stood looking up at them.

  “Charge!” Darzek ordered.

  The shock troops swept down the hill, and the natives fled.

  A cheer went up. Darzek had difficulty in recalling his troops, who would have chased the natives down into the city. Scenting a trap, he reorganized them quickly and rushed them to the other side of the hill in anticipation of a coordinated attack. There was none.

  Thoughtfully he returned to his headquarters. There he found Gul Halvr and Gul Isc cavorting about with unrestrained jubilation. The shock troops dropped their poles and joined in, the watch deserted its positions, and in a twinkling Darzek’s army was milling about with the casual enthusiasm of a community picnic.

  Angrily he shouted it back to order and shrugged off the outpouring of excited congratulations. The Dark was performing so ineptly as to make him highly suspicious, and he immediately ordered a practice evacuation maneuver.

  Soon after dark Rhinzl sent for him. The night was deeply overcast and Darzek could see nothing at all, but Rhinzl pointed into the gloom at several small groups of natives who had climbed partway up the hill. “I am uncertain of what they are trying to do,” Rhinzl said.

  “If any of them get to the top, grab them and ask them. Do you still think they won’t attack at night?”

  “They shouldn’t attack at night. Of course there is no way to know what their madness may move them to do. But I think they will come by day—every day, as long as we are here. And each time there will be more of them.”

  Darzek went back to bed. He learned in the morning that the natives had not approached the top of the hill and had left long before dawn. Thoughtfully he ordered another practice evacuation.

  “Everyone is wondering why you’re getting ready to run away when we’re winning,” Miss Schlupe told him.

  Darzek made no answer. The previous day’s victory, instead of buoying up his hopes, had deepened his pessimism. He wondered again if the Dark’s weapon could be working on him.

  At dawn the rampaging mobs were already converging at the foot of the hill. There they waited, sending an incessant cacophony of insult toward the hilltop. Their numbers grew steadily. When Darzek made his midday rounds the hill was surrounded.

  “There seem to be such a lot of them,” Gul Azfel observed plaintively.

  Darzek nodded and grimly contemplated his thin line of defense. His defensive perimeter was a long one, and there was no way that he could shorten it. He had to defend the entire hilltop. His only hope was that the natives would reach the top in driblets. Then he could defeat them in detail with his shock troops.

  He invoked phase one of the evacuation plan and ordered to the ship all of the nocturnals and kitchen helpers. Then he made another circuit of the hilltop to bolster his commanders. Some of the traders were performing magnificently. Gul Halvr had positioned himself in front of the barricade, where he stood peering boldly down at the natives like an Indian scout. Gul Ceyh paced back and forth, exuding confidence and chanting in a strange language something that might have been a hymn to battle. Gul Isc was also pacing back and forth, but he blurted nervously, “I don’t know what to do!” Darzek told him what to do.

  The efa posed his major command problem. They had refused to serve under another trader, but they led their sector of the defense like an embattled board of directors. Darzek located them in a nearby dwelling, furiously engaged in argument, and he did not bother to interrupt them. He promoted an undertrader to take their place and moved on.

  Gul Kaln had the bored aplomb of a tourist out sight-seeing. Gul Meszk seemed mainly concerned that the work of the kitchen force had been interrupted and he might miss a meal. Darzek told him he could spend the rest of his life eating, but that the fun of winning a war might never come again, and left him.

  The natives began to move up the hill.

  It was not the wild charge of the day before, but a deliberate advance. Watching, Darzek told himself gloomily that this time they could not be frightened away. They were so solidly massed that they would fill the hill from top to bottom. Pressure from the rear would force the front ranks forward.

  He summoned Gud Baxak, who was carrying his arsenal, chose a position with care, and, as the screaming natives neared the top, lofted a tear-gas grenade down the slope. The chorus of hate changed to one of terror, and the natives charged. Darzek threw one more grenade, and then desisted; the gas was simply driving the front ranks forward. They reached the top and began to grapple with the defenders.

  As Darzek turned to signal his shock troops into the melee, he heard a cry of alarm behind him. Whirling, he saw a group of natives moving between the dwellings.

  His first horrified thought was that the line had broken on the far side of the perimeter. He faced the shock troops around, but even as they moved forward a new threat developed on his right. This time he could see natives pouring out of a dwelling.

  They were coming in through the transmitters.

  Off on his left the same thing was happening. Darzek did not hesitate. He raised both hands above his head, signaling the evacuation.

  His troops disengaged and drew back. The natives followed them closely, shouting, “Grilf! Grilf!” and smoke was already curling from the central dwellings; but there was no panic. Darzek breathed fervent thanks for the practice evacuations and watched with a flush of pride as his shock troops formed up to protect the transmitters while the others filed through them in orderly fashion.

  Darzek circled the hilltop, making certain that no one had been cut off. The natives trailed after him, screaming derisively, but they made no attempt to interfere. Flames were leaping high from a dozen dwellings when Darzek finally convinced himself that the evacuation
was complete. He signaled Gud Baxak into a transmitter and turned to follow him. His last visual impression was of Kxon and three of his ex-investigators pouring oil to fire another dwelling.

  The ship’s captain had been watching everything on the transmitter screen, and he looked shaken. Silently he approached Darzek for orders. Darzek asked for a complete roll call.

  Miss Schlupe touched his elbow and said anxiously, “What’d you do to Rhinzl?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “This is the first time I’ve ever known him to be angry.”

  “Where is he?” Darzek asked.

  He found the trader in a darkened compartment with the other nocturnals. “You sent us away before the fight started,” Rhinzl said bitterly.

  “I had the impression that you didn’t care for daylight action,” Darzek said. “Anyway, there was no fight. It would have been silly to fight. We were outnumbered a hundred to one in all directions.”

  “Indeed?” Rhinzl said coldly. “But I suppose you are to be congratulated on running away so efficiently.”

  Puzzled, Darzek returned to the ship’s lounge. In one corner the efa were entangled in one of their loud arguments, Brokefa shouting, “How can we know, when we didn’t even try to fight? I’m telling you, Gul Darr—”

  His voice dropped. Darzek walked toward Gul Halvr, who slowly and deliberately turned his back. Darzek moved on, and was suddenly conscious that traders and undertraders were drawing away from him.

  Again he found Miss Schlupe at his elbow. He said bewilderedly, “Can it be that they actually think—”

  “I’m afraid so. It was those practice evacuations that started it. They wondered why you wanted to rehearse running away when you were winning. And then you did run away without a fight, after you won so easily yesterday. A lot of them think they could have won again.”