Imperial Stars 1-The Stars at War (29 page)

The riflemen followed me upstairs. We looked in turn from each of the attic windows, picking out the enemy in the fields around the hill—beyond range, they thought. It wasn't too far before sunrise now, and you could see them clearly. I recognized a few.

The four of us who were armed chose our targets and took up our stations, each of us with an attendant carrying ammunition. I had the south side, where targets were most numerous. Closest was a campfire, with five men beside it, apparently asleep. It lay in a cleared space in a wheat field. What they were burning I couldn't guess. For that matter, why had they started the campfire at all?

Farther from me two groups were sitting or squatting, staring this way; also I was quite sure Marvic's house was occupied, and not by friends.

"Ready!" I called. From the other rooms came acknowledging echoes. I reminded the bowmen to stand by too, then raised my rifle and yelled, "Go to it!" And fired.

The shock almost knocked me over. It can't have been only the kick. As much as that, it was the shattering noise. I took a step backward; my hearing cleared.

The others' shots were a slow, irregular crackling. I tried again. No, the kick wasn't so bad, but the gun was heavier than I'd realized. I got a chair, experimented till I found a comfortable position; then began in earnest.

In the directionless light of dawn, a group of men crouching in a lane between fields of wheat. Only their heads were visible to me; but their bodies, though hidden, were better targets. I aimed low. Two of the men had jumped up at the first shot, but I stuck to the stationary targets. I fired more rapidly, getting the feel of the weapon. My whole body shuddered in phase with the explosions. The sights seemed to be set wrong; I raised the barrel a little. Three of the targets fell. I shifted to the others, now running toward Marvic's house. Shock! Shock! against my shoulder. Got one of them.

As I inserted a new clip of ammunition the stock trembled against my hand, silence poured shouting into my ears. Raised the barrel again, blinked away the green dizziness.

Death, my brain reminded me. Blink that away, too. This wasn't killing. This was a contest against the weakness in my left forearm, the wrenching ache in all my ribs. Besides,
we had to win.

Sweep the barrel to follow the running men, my elbow pivoting on the bruise on my knee. Rake the walls of Marvic's house. Shock! Shock! Viselike around my chest—

A figure darted from the house. Even as I sighted on it, I was suddenly filled with
joy
, the foreign irrelevant joy of remembering what came before the rifle and the shooting. The target was Barbi. I pulled the trigger—once, before I stopped myself.

I sat back then in a cool haze of relief; for now I had to stop shooting. The jolting agony could stop for a moment.

I didn't know whether I'd hit Barbi or not.

The voice was Shelton's: "You got many."

"Yes." I opened my eyes.

"You through shooting?"

"Bruise here hurt too much." He fingered his throat carefully. "Jane Anderson took my place." He was behind me, peering over my shoulder through the window slit. "Look, Elder Stevan," he interjected now, "the men by the fire."

"I can't see, this powder smoke gets in my eyes— Oh! They're burning their arrows."

"Not burning—"

"No! They're lighting them, going to shoot them at the Temple." To send it the way of Lavery's house. The Temple! They couldn't get close enough to set a torch to it, so they were using burning arrows. The Chief had a secret weapon to match ours.

"Stop them—"

Before I had my aim the first of the arrows had left the bow. I dropped the archer immediately. The others knew better than to stand up as he had. They fired lying flat on their backs; not easy targets. The rifle jumped in my hands as I swung the sights in an arc around the campfire. Still the bowmen's needles drew the threads of scarlet flame across the sky, toward the Temple.

Shelton: "They hit! They hit!"

"What?"

"Arrow on the roof!"

Desperately, "How do you know?"

"I heard, right above us."

"Shelton, get . . . no, get water . . . get rugs, get many Folk to help."

"Rugs?"

Shock! Shock! And, "Yes, cover flames with them—dip rugs in water first—" but he was gone.

I had to stop to reload. I looked up at the bare boards of the slanting ceiling. No charred boards, no sign—yet. Had the arrow put itself out as it hit? The room might still be damp from the rain, mightn't it?

From the next room, "Fire! Look, there, fire!"

Before I knew it I had to run to the source of the shouting. But it was not what I'd feared. At one of the room's two windows Jane Anderson stood calmly, rifle raised. At the other was a cluster of Folk, jostling, staring out. "Elder Stevan, another campfire out there."

From which would come more of the deadly arrows.

The dizziness again. Back to my own window, into my chair. The dizziness again.

I look around me helplessly, and my eyes can't quite focus on the bright mouth that has opened in the ceiling over me. The slitted mouth of red and black, widening into a yellow grin.

The sound of my horror is a shrill screaming. Not from me. Maybe not from me. But a terrible screaming, like the powder smell which scalds my lungs.

Take aim again out the window. Can't make out— Why, that's not the campfire, that's the Temple burning. Of course not, it's the campfire. The screaming goes on. My finger keeps pressing the trigger, but I don't think about my aim. Nor about the Folk scrambling about behind me, beating at the flames. Nor about the flames themselves. I think about the screaming. It's shrill and loud, but it's distant. Sometimes there are words to it; can't make them out.

What is the voice saying!

This is important, I must know what it is saying, this terrified voice—of Barbi screaming.

Hands took the rifle from me and carried me through a wave of flames.

Before I opened my eyes I felt the grass under me and the warm sun on my face. That was strange, but it didn't matter because the voice wasn't screaming any more, it was quiet, and it was saying, "Stevan? Are you awake?"

"I'm awake."

"Good. I hope you're all right. We didn't know what was wrong with you. I have to talk to you, Stevan."

I intended to speak, but Barbi began at once on an account of the battle. Most of this I only half-heard, for it was at this point that I opened my eyes and discovered that I couldn't see.

I blinked hard and rolled my head to one side and the other, with very little effect. It must be hemorrhages in my retina, I thought, from the jolting that semiauto gave me; but even a sure explanation wouldn't have comforted me!

The unseen Barbi was still reciting her reckoning of the dead and wounded. I forced myself to listen. When she was done I said, on impulse: "So the Chief takes over. This is what you had in mind ever since you came here, isn't it?"

"What!"

"You've just been waiting your chance to let the Chief into the Village."

"No. You know me better than to think that. When I first came, maybe—but I can hardly remember the way I thought then. I don't think the same now. Know what I mean?"

"I suppose so. I'm sorry, Barbi." I sat up, and as I did so the blood drained from my head and I shouted: "I can see!"

"You can—?"

"When I first opened my eyes I was blind. I can see again now." I exulted in the sight of Barbi standing in the grass in front of me, her feet spread and her hands on her hips.

"That's not good," she said. "You'll have to take it easy for a couple of days till your eyes heal."

"You're not going to kill me, then."

"No, I think you still don't understand what's happened."

"Maybe not. What do you have to show for all this bloodshed? Shelton and Jenkins didn't like the idea of Pomroy's dying, and they won't forget easily."

Sitting down beside me, she plucked a blade of grass and put the stem in her mouth. "In the first place, let's admit that the Village was sure to be attacked, and defeated—maybe not for several generations, but eventually."

"Possibly."

"Certainly. The hunters, with the whole continent to expand into would multiply indefinitely. They'd have recruits from Old Red and his kind, who'd bring them any new weapons the farmers might have. That's one thing you refused to recognize—this had to happen."

"So you precipitated it, instead—"

"Now hold on. By having our . . . our barbarian invasion now, with me leading it, we get several advantages: The hunters come while there's only one weak tribe of them. Also, they come under leaders who know the value of the Village. They may loot, but they leave the Village standing, because they learn that the Village is good for leather, woven cloth, corn, and so forth. This way the Village can continue. The people here, and later in other settlements, will have the highest technology; the hunters may take the golden eggs, but they won't kill the goose. Civilization
will
be rebuilt, Stevan."

"Why didn't you discuss this with me?"

"I did, enough to know you'd never agree! Besides, you had to stop being God." She chewed on her stalk of grass. "I hope you don't think the Folk
liked
asking the Word of the Elder every time they turned around. Why do you think Paul Pomroy was on my side last night? Oh, you'd have had a revolt on your hands eventually, if the hunters didn't raze the Village first. Your 'Elder' religion wouldn't have fooled the Folk forever."

"I had to try to hang on, to save the books."

"Yes, yes! But what's happened was the only thing that
could
save the books. I didn't order those bowmen to set fire to the Temple, you know—"

"The screaming—"

"Oh, yes, before. I was shouting to the Chief's men to stop the fighting so we could put the fire out. It was close."

I looked up at the Temple. It was as if a great bite had been taken out of it; most of the top story was black and open to the sky. But the ground floor, where the books were, still stood.

"Yes," Barbi went on, "we have to keep the books; and the scholars. If the Elders had stayed set apart, learning might have died with the last of them. But now, we can try something else.

"You Elders studied history. You patterned your Village after what you read—a Neolithic town, with yourselves as Shamen; or a feudal manor, with yourselves as lords. Let's take another chapter in the history books. Remember?
In ancient Rome, the teachers were slaves.
"

She rose and stood facing me, smiling. "You see how perfect it is? Some people will always want to be scholars; it's an interesting and useful job. But the stigma attached to it will prevent the scholars from setting up an aristocracy, Elder-style, and that's the big danger in the weird situation the world's in now.

"I think all the 'humans' will be scholars, at first, because they're not good for anything else. And that fits, too. Why shouldn't they be slaves? Such weaklings! Obviously inferior." Again she smiled.

"The teachers are slaves—"

The mighty were fallen. I had lost my kingdom, I had lost my wife; I was a sick man, incurable; now I was a slave. But around me on all sides lay the farms, aswarm with Folk, the freed Folk, and before me Barbi stood strong and confident in the sunlight.

I looked down, tried to think. It was no use. I couldn't concentrate on what she'd said. Barbi had won, the thing was over with—what good did thinking do?

"You're right," I said, quietly. And wondered if she was.

There is more than one kind of aristocracy.

Luke tells the story: Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, were entertaining Jesus and his disciples. Martha rushed about the kitchen and household, seeing to the cooking, bringing wash basins, changing towels, and doing the other things needful when one's home has been unexpectedly invaded by a celebrity and his entourage.

"Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.

"And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.

"But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me.

"And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou are careful and troubled about many things:

"But one thing is needful: Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42)

Much has happened since then; but as Rudyard Kipling tells us, we sons of Martha have yet to pay the final reckoning.

The sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.
It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; It is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.
 

They say to mountains, "Be ye removed." They say to the lesser floods, "Be dry."
Under their rods are the rocks reproved—they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit—then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.
They finger death at their gloves' end where they piece and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into his terrible stall,
And hale him forth a haltered steer, and goad and turn him till evenfall.
To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden—under the earthline their altars are—
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a city's drouth.

 

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they dam'-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's days may be long in the land.
 

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat—
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.
 

And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessed—they know the Angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessed, and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the Feet—they hear the Word—they see how truly the Promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and—the Lord He lays it on Martha's Sons!