Destiny Doll (15 page)

"We'll soon know," I said.

"I'm afraid," said Sara, "that it won't be good. Maybe we made a mistake. You were the one to go, of course. But he wanted to, so badly."

"But why?" I asked. "Why did the poor fool want to go? Mock heroics? This is no time, I tell you . . ."

She shook her head. "Not mock heroics. Something more complicated than that. Tuck is a complex sort of person . . ."

"There's something eating on him," I said. "I'd like to know what it is."

"He doesn't think the way you and I do," she said. "He sees things differently. There is something driving him. Not a physical something. Nothing physical like fear or ambition or envy. A mystical force of some sort. I know. You've always thought he was just another religico. Another faker. One of that wandering tribe that takes on pretended religious attributes to cover up their strangeness. But I tell you he isn't. I've known him a lot longer than you have . . ."

Paint came plunging over the hilltop and, setting his rockers, skidded to a halt. Tuck, sagging in the saddle, let go of the shield and sword belt and they clattered to the ground.

Tuck sat there and stared at us, half-paralyzed.

"What about the brain case?" Sara asked. "Have they got it?"

Tuck nodded.

"Will they trade it?"

"Not trade," he croaked. "Not sell it. They will fight for it. It's the only way . . ."

"Fight for it?" I asked. "With a sword!"

"That's what they gave it to me for. I told them I came in peace and peace, they said, was coward. They wanted me to fight immediately, but I said I had to go and pray and they laughed at that, but they let me leave."

He slid off Paint and collapsed in a heap upon the ground.

"I cannot fight," he shrilled at us. "I have never fought. I have never held a weapon in my hand until this day. I cannot kill. I refuse to kill. They said it would be fair. One of me against one of them, but . . ."

"But you couldn't fight," I said.

Sara snapped at me. "Of course he couldn't fight. He doesn't know a thing of fighting."

"Stop that sniveling," I snarled at him. "Get on your feet and get off that robe of yours."

"You!" gasped Sara.

"Who the hell else?" I asked her. "He goes out and gums up the business. It's up to me to go out and finish it. You want that brain case, don't you?"

"But you have never used a sword, have you?"

"No, of course I haven't. What do you think I am? A damned barbarian?"

Tuck hadn't stirred. I reached down and jerked him to his feet. "Off with that robe!" I yelled. "We can't keep them waiting down there."

I jerked off my shirt and began to unlace my shoes.

"The sandals, too," I said. "I'll have to look like you."

"They'll know the difference," Sara said. "You don't look the least like Tuck."

"With the hood pulled up around my face, they won't know the difference. They won't remember what he looked like. And even if they did, they wouldn't care. They have a sucker and they know it. It's a lark for them."

I stood up and peeled off my trousers. Tuck hadn't moved. "Get that robe off him," I said to Sara. "That prayer of his can't last too long. They'll get impatient waiting for him. We don't want them to come out hunting him."

"Let's give it up," said Sara. "Let's just admit that we are licked. We can head back down the trail . . ."

"They'd come after us," I said. "We couldn't outrun them. Get that robe off him."

Sara moved toward him and Tuck suddenly came alive. He unfastened the belt and shrugged out of the robe, tossing it to me.

I put it on and cinched it around me, pulling the cowl over my head.

 "You've never used a sword," said Sara. "You'll be going up against the best swordsman that they have."

"I'll have one advantage," I told her. "This man of theirs, no matter how good he is, will be convinced he is paired off with a sissy. He'll be off guard. He may try being fancy. Or he won't try too hard. He'll be a show-off and try to make it look like play. If I can get to him . . ."

"Mike . . ."

"The sandals," I said.

Tuck kicked them toward me and I stepped into them.

He stood naked except for a dirty pair of shorts and he was the scrawniest human being I had ever seen. His stomach was so flat that it seemed to be sunk in toward his backbone and you could count every rib he owned. His arms and legs were pipestems.

I bent down to pick up the sword belt and strapped it about my waist. I took out the sword and had a look at it. It was a heavy, awkward weapon, a little rusted, not too sharp—but sharp enough. I jammed it back into the scabbard, picked up the shield and slid it on my arm.

"Good luck, Mike," said Sara.

"Thanks," I said. But I wasn't thankful. I was just burned up. This blundering fool had gone out and messed up the detail and left me a dirty job to do and, deep inside of me, I wasn't sure at all of the kind of job that I could manage.

I climbed on Paint and as the hobby turned to go. Tuck rushed over to me and stood there, in his dirty shorts, reaching up the doll to me, offering it to me.

I lashed out with my foot and struck his arm. The doll, jarred out of his grasp, went flying through the air.

Paint, turned now, went plunging up the hill and down the trail. The centaurs were still as they had been before. I had been afraid that I might meet them, streaming up the trail, coming to get Tuck.

At my appearance they sent up a mocking cheer.

We reached the flat on which the centaurs were gathered and Paint went rocketing toward them at a steady clip. One of the centaurs trotted out to meet me and Paint stopped, facing him. He had a shield, exactly like the one I carried, and a sword belt strapped around one shoulder.

"You return," he said. "We had not thought you would."

"I remain still a man of peace," I said, "Is there no other way?"

"Peace be coward," he said.

"You insist?" I asked.

"There is," he said, "no other way of honor." He was mocking me.

"Speaking of honor," I said, "how do I know that when I get through killing you I will get the sphere?"

"You speak most lightly of killing me," he said.

"One of us must die," I told him.

"That is true," he said, "but it will be you."

"Just on the chance that you are wrong," I insisted, "how about the sphere?"

"In the unlikely event that you still live," he said, "it will be brought to you."

"And I'll be allowed to leave in peace?"

"You insult me," he said, in cold anger. "You insult my race."

"I am a stranger here," I said. "I do not know your race."

"We are honorable," he said, the words gritted through his teeth.

"In that case," I said, "let us proceed to business."

"The rules must be observed," he said. "Each of us will move back and turn around to face each other. You note the fabric on the pole?"

I nodded. Someone in the crowd of centaurs was holding up a pole with a dirty piece of cloth tied to it.

"When the symbol falls," he said, "the fight begins." I nodded and kicked Paint in the ribs to get him turned around. I rode a few paces, then turned Paint around again. The centaur also had turned around and we were facing one another. The pole with the dirty piece of cloth still was held on high. The centaur unsheathed his sword and I followed his example.

"Paint, old hoss," I said, "now we're in for it."

"Most honored sir," Paint told me, "I shall strive my utmost in our cause."

The pole with the dirty rag came down.

We rushed together. Paint was going full speed after the first two swings he made upon his rockers, and the centaur was thundering down upon us, his driving hoofs cutting great clots of earth out of the ground and throwing them behind him. He held his sword on high and his shield was raised above his head. As he charged toward us he let go with a strange shrill yodeling warwhoop that was enough to freeze the blood.

Not more than a couple of seconds could have elapsed between the time the flag had dropped and we were upon one another and in those two seconds (if it were two seconds) my suddenly busy mind thought of at least a dozen clever tricks by which I could outsmart my opponent, and as speedily dropped them all. In that last moment, I knew there was nothing I could do other than try to catch the blow of his sword upon my shield and to try, by whatever means presented itself, to get in a blow of my own.

My mind dropped its wild flurry of ideas and became a hard, cold block and a grimness settled on me and I knew that this was it. I had to finish him off quickly or he would finish me and the matter of my finishing him must depend largely upon luck, for I had no skill and no time to learn the skill.

I saw his sword coming down in a full-armed swinging stroke and I knew also that my sword was swinging at his head, driven by every ounce of strength I could muster in my arm. His eyes were half-closed and beady and his face wore a look of self-satisfied alertness.

For he knew he had me. He knew I had no chance. From many little things that he had noted, he must have sensed that I was no expert swordsman and was at an utter disadvantage.

His sword struck the edge of my shield so hard that my arm was numbed and the blade went skidding off it to go slicing past my shoulder. But even as this happened, he jerked suddenly, beginning to rear up and backward. A glazed look flitted across his face and the arm that held the shield dropped away and the edge of my sword came down squarely on top his head, driven with all the strength I had, slicing into his skull and bisecting his face to drive deep into his neck.

And in that instant before my blade had struck him, when his face had taken on that glazed look and his shield arm had sagged away, I had glimpsed the black hole which blossomed in his forehead, on a line between and just above his eyes. But I saw it only for a fraction of a second, for almost as soon as it appeared, the sword was slicing through it, almost as if it had been placed there to show me where to strike.

SIXTEEN

The brain case was nicked and battered. It had had hard usage.

I handed it down to Sara. "There it is," I said. "That was a hell of a chance you took."

She bristled at the anger in my voice. "It was no chance at all," she said. "The bullet goes where I aim the rifle and I am good at it. It worked out, didn't it?"

"It worked out just fine," I said, still shaken. "But two feet to one side . . ."

"It couldn't have," she said. "I aimed it . . ."

"Yeah, I know," I said. "Right in the center of his forehead."

I climbed down off Paint and shucked off the robe. Tuck was crouched at the foot of one of the twisted badlands trees. I tossed the robe to him.

"Where are my pants?" I asked.

"Over there," said Sara, pointing. "I picked them up and folded them."

I picked up the trousers and shook them out and started getting into them.

Sara had been turning the brain around and around in her band.

"What happened to it?" she asked. "What did they use it for?"

"What would you expect a bunch of polo-playing barbarians to use a brain case for?"

"You mean a polo ball?"

I nodded. "Now they'll have to go back to balls chiseled out of stone. They're all upset about it,"

Hoot came swarming down the slope from where he had been standing lookout.

"You perform excellent," he hooted at me. "For one wielding an unaccustomed weapon . . ."

"Miss Foster was the one who performed so excellently," I told him. "She bagged my bird for me."

"No matter which," said Hoot, "the deed be neatly done and the game-playing hobbies are evacuating."

"You mean that they are leaving?"

"They are forming up to march."

I climbed to the top of the hill and the centaurs had indeed formed into a ragged line and were marching west. It was a relief to see them go. Honorable as they might be (and they were honorable; they had given me the brain case) I still would have felt slightly nervous if they had hung around.

Turning back, I saw that Tuck and Sara had hauled Roscoe's body off the pile of water tins and were opening up his skull so they could insert the brain case.

"Do you think it has been damaged?" Sara asked. "The beating it has taken. Look at all the dents in it!"

I shook my head. I didn't know.

"He doesn't have to know too much," said Sara, hopefully. "We won't ask much of him. Just some simple questions."

Tuck held out his hand for the brain case and Sara gave it to him.

"You know how to do?" I asked Tuck.

"I think I do," he said. "There are slots. You just slip it in . . ."

He slipped it in and slapped it with the heel of his hand to drive it home, then banged the skull plate shut.

Roscoe stirred. He had been propped against a wall of earth and now he straightened to stand upon his feet. His head swiveled about to look at each of us in turn. His arms moved tentatively, as if he might be testing them.

He spoke, his voice grating. "Whyever," he said, "wherever, however, forever, whenever."

He stopped speaking and looked around at us as if to see if we had understood him. When it must have been apparent that we hadn't, he said, solemnly and slowly, so there'd be no mistaking him this time, "Hat, cat, bat, fat, rat, sat, vat, pat, gnat, gat, drat, tat."

"He's completely nuts," I said.

"Guts," said Roscoe.

"He rhymes," said Sara. "That is all he does—just a rhyming dictionary. Do you suppose he's forgotten everything? Do you think he knows anything at all?"

I grinned at her. "Why don't you ask him?"

"Roscoe," said Sara, "do you remember anything at all?"

"Tall," said Roscoe, "call, ball, mall, fall, gall."

"No, no," said Sara, "do you remember your master?"

"Pastor," said Roscoe, maddeningly conversational.

"Oh, it's no use!" cried Sara. "All the way we traveled, all the, trouble we've been through and you down there risking your neck and all we get is this!"

"Roscoe," I said sharply, "we are looking for Lawrence Arlen Knight . . ."

"Kite," said Roscoe, "sight, night, blight . . ."

"No, goddamn it!" I shouted. "We are looking for him. Point in the direction we should look."

"Book," said Roscoe, "cook, took." But even as he mouthed his rhyming gibberish, he squared around and flung out his arm, with a finger pointing, holding his arm and finger rigid, like a steady sign board, pointing northward up the trail.