In Solitary (14 page)

‘I expect you hate me?’ I said, as he came near. He stopped and looked puzzled – then he realized what I was talking about.

‘I did,’ he replied, ‘in the beginning, but I’ve grown used to being rebuffed by my father. He’s grown to an age when he would be cantankerous anyway. How are you? Well?’ Lintar seemed older himself, more mature.

‘I have no diseases that I know of, but I’m not the hearty youth I was when you last saw me. Endrod’s been keeping me boxed in there – it doesn’t do my spirit any good. Weyym’s been the recipient of a lot more begging orison lately.’ I pointed to the cell.

Lintar replied: ‘Perhaps I may be able to do something for you but I’ve lost a lot of my credibility lately: especially in this part of the world.’

I was sure the guard neither spoke nor understood Terran so I explained openly how Lintar might be able to regain a little of that trustworthiness. I told him about Endrod and his plans to allow a revolution among the humans to grow in order that he might use it as an excuse to begin a wholesale slaughter of mankind. ‘… so all you need to do is
speak to someone in authority and reveal Endrod for what he is – a maniac who will risk Soal lives to satisfy his own personal hatred and ambition …’

‘Unfortunately you’re too late,’ said Lintar. ‘It’s happened, and the situation is not so clear-cut as you seem to believe. The Klees of Ostraylea and his Council have been involved in Endrod’s plot from the beginning and approved of everything Endrod has done. Since they are the law here, even the deaths of several Soal will not alter Endrod’s influence – in fact it increases his chances of getting other Klees to agree to the act of genocide. The deaths are so serious a matter that I think even my father will agree to Endrod’s demands – though it will practically destroy him.’

‘How many humans died?’ I asked quickly.

He waved the question away, as if it was an insect buzzing round his eyes.

‘You’ll have to ask your female for the details Cave – I’m not in full possession of the whole story in any case.’

I nodded and could think of nothing else to say. Looking round I let my eyes feed on the scene around me. In front of me lay the Soal community with its beautiful streets and buildings, and the machine-tended lawns. On the edge of this, where the water bubbled through from the subterranean filters, the foliage had been allowed to grow wild and had almost reached jungle proportions. Some of the trees were taller than the spires that lanced the air before them and their heads tossed gently in a wind that had its origins in a cooler region than the one in which we stood.

Behind me was the tower, legs frozen in the act of striding across the desert and between and beneath those gigantic legs were the vat walks.

‘Taking a last look?’ asked Lintar. He had squatted on the ground now, and I joined him. The guard remained aloof, standing apart from us, but aware of our movements.

‘I’ve taken many last looks. I seem to keep clinging to this ball in spite of Endrod …’

‘But this time he has you cold … or perhaps not?’

I frowned. ‘Meaning?’

Lintar began drawing designs in the
dust. I looked for a message but after a while I realized he was just doodling. He said, ‘Some of your ill-fated humans escaped after the skirmish and Endrod has no idea where they’ve gone. They entered one of those intercontinental tubes in three or four of the stolen aircraft. Endrod’s people were not able to follow – as you know we need to acclimatize to each region in thermochambers. By the time charts of the tubes were produced the dissidents had disappeared. I have no doubt that Endrod wishes to know of their whereabouts urgently – and since the only one that can tell him …’

Stella! He did not need to say the name.

I said sharply. ‘If he harms her …’

‘He needs the information badly. You can see what sort of position it’s going to put him in,’ said Lintar. ‘Incidentally, she too almost escaped the net. It took them two days to find her and strangely enough she was finally captured not far from here – just to the north. Don’t you find that peculiar Cave?’

I did not answer but looked towards the building where Stella had been taken. I hoped she would talk because we were all finished anyway and I did not want her to suffer needlessly, in spite of the fact that it was she who had created this position.

‘She’ll be all right,’ I said cheerfully. ‘She’s more than a match for Endrod. She’s all nails and spit that woman – he’d better watch out for himself.’

‘I’m inclined to agree with your assessment of the female but unfortunately she will not be allowed to get into a position where she can use her weapons.’

I declined to reply, but thought privately that Stella had more than tangible weapons. She was an Earthwoman, full of the cunning and guile that were inherent in her kind. Endrod had not come up against a person like Stella before and I was sure she would find some way of outwitting the Soal.

I turned to Lintar again.

‘I won’t miss you when I’m dead, because the Sennish tells us that death is a vacuum and I will have no more thoughts – but I want you to know that I have thought of you often since we parted and I still love you as I would love a brother.’

‘Aren’t you ashamed, to be so fond
of a Soal – your enemy?’ he smiled.

I remained serious in spite of Lintar’s trying to wean me away from my mood – the talk made him uncomfortable.

‘The Soal never have been my enemy. Circumstances, and a will stronger than my own, forced me into acts I wanted no part in. I have felt closer to the Soal than ever these past few months – though there are some humans of whom I have grown very fond. Tangiia – you would like him. He has the same impatience as yourself when things will not go right with life. And one or two women …’

Lintar smiled again.
‘One or two?
You are collecting them?’

I laughed now, aware that I was not going to pierce his armour.

‘Probably the other way around my friend – they are collecting me. Each of them has a piece of me that she won’t let go of. I’m afraid I’m only half a man in both their eyes – one of them thinks I’m too meek, and the other, too bold … Weyym’s eyes!’

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Lintar. ‘Why are you looking so pale?’

‘I’ve just thought – one of them may be dead.’

‘Then half of you is with her. I must say you only look half a man at the moment – but that’s not your fault. I must go now. This is probably the last we shall ever see of each other …’

‘You’ve said that before.’ I did not want an emotional scene. I was not likely to get one from Lintar but the way I felt at the moment any display of pity or unhappiness might evoke one from me.

I watched him walk away, carefully avoiding treading on the stones and thought how easy it was to love another creature – one not of your own kind. A lot easier than loving another human because there was no personal conflict involved. One was detached from another species and could watch and enjoy a rise status without feeling envious, competition being nonexistent; unpleasant characteristics could be accepted as racial traits, whether they were individual or not; strange behaviour was rewarding, not suspicious; temporary rejection was a sign of independence, not of indifference. Lintar’s casual acceptance of my impending execution would have been
unforgivable in a human, but it was the Soal way of hiding grief. It made me feel wretched to watch Lintar lightly tripping across the ground which would soon receive my ashes but I could not censure him for it.

The guard was letting me have a little extra time, keeping a wary eye out for the approach of any superior – especially Endrod. I rose to my feet after a few moments more, ready to enter my solitude for a little while longer. As I did so I noticed Lintar’s doodles in the dust. Strange marks. He had drawn a series of familiar-looking narrow inverted V’s. They were like a cluster of tall boatless sails. Odd. I shrugged my shoulders. Another example of the separateness of our two races. Aesthetic communication was poor.

Endrod had me moved to a longhouse on the shores
of an artificial inland sea a few kilometres to the north. The sea was connected by an arrow-straight canal to the ocean and was salty, the water undergoing a long journey of filters before becoming the freshwater oasis springs to the south. This place, which no doubt Lintar had persuaded Endrod to move me to, had thermostats and the atmosphere was much more bearable than the sandstone cell. Here I waited for Stella.

When she finally came she looked badly bruised and shaken and after holding her tight for a few minutes I asked her if Endrod had her hurt badly.

‘A little, but he believes he has time. Tomorrow he will try harder …’ her eyes glinted, ‘but then tomorrow is plenty of time.’

Her attitude disturbed me.

‘What’s happening then?’ I asked. Her answer was delivered in a triumphant tone.

‘Wait and see – I can say one thing – Fridjt’s coming. Anything else I say might cause you harm.’ She put a hand to my cheek and stroked it while looking at me possessively.

‘You mean Endrod might try to make
me
talk next – and I would probably crack.’

She nodded, giving me a sweet smile.

‘But you’ll know soon enough, my love. Tomorrow we may be breathing Soal-free air.’

I felt my eyes widen. ‘It’s not all over – the revolution?’

‘It’s just begun.’

I found it difficult to believe that the whole
episode had not closed when Stella was captured, because she
was
the revolution – without her the others were lost. They had no leadership, no direction. I could not conceive of their doing anything without her. Especially Fridjt. He was a big man with a small brain – a dinosaur. Unless she had found someone else capable of assuming authority, and that was doubtful.

‘Tell me about the fight,’ I said. ‘Did anyone I know get killed? Tangiia? Peloa …?’ Then, as casually as I could, ‘… Tiptihani?’

There was no sign on Stella’s face that she suspected Tiptihani of being my lover as she said, ‘Peloa and Tiptihani? Of course, you met them briefly didn’t you? No, they survived the skirmish – so did Tangiia. Actually Peloa didn’t do very much – she’s pregnant you know – but Tiptihani was a great organizer. Oh yes,’ the light of remembrance came into Stella’s eyes. ‘She was with you when you were captured by the Soal, wasn’t she? She told me she had to leave you and catch up with Tangiia – I felt like killing her for that, but when she said you had been poisoned by a stonefish I realized she had no choice. What happened? Obviously the Soal treated you.’

I recounted my experiences from the moment Tiptihani left me, leaving out the embellishments – the mayflies and my long hours of loneliness. The story was rather boring for the telling, and I began to feel that I had somehow let everybody down by not clawing and kicking at my escorts, making them drag me to my cell, refusing my food and attempting brilliant but fool-hardly escape schemes. If I had told her a story like that however, Stella would not have believed me. She knew how I reacted to circumstances and she knew where I would make a stand and where I would bend.

When I had finished she nodded her head gravely. I think she understood some of the torment I had been going through in the cell. She then proceeded to tell her side of the story.

‘I was very angry with you,’ she began, ‘for leaving the island without telling me first – but then you knew I would forbid you to go, that’s why you didn’t ask. After you left I passed the time familiarizing myself with the chiton, because once Tangiia was called for by the Soal and returned with recruits, you and I would need to train them in the use of the craft. So Fridjt and I together worked out all those
details you had no time to pass on, by trial and error.

‘When Tangiia returned we played everything in low key, making sure that the small island bore no marks of its large population of four, in order that the Soal who were to come for Tangiia did not get suspicious. They came at night however, and everything followed my plan quite smoothly – too smoothly in fact, and it was when Tangiia returned with the news that two thousand Polynesians had promised to join in the battle, resurrecting old war cries and dusty memories of ancestral bloodletting, that I began to get an inkling of our true position …’

Had she known about Endrod’s scheme at that time? If that was the case, Stella was so farsighted as to be almost a magician in the eyes of people like myself.

Stella continued. ‘However, this setback was not as disastrous as it could have been – it would not necessarily interfere with the main plan. So I decided to go ahead – even though by now I was sure we were being watched. I calculated we would not be halted before we had actually done some physical harm to the Soal – otherwise we would have been stopped long before.

‘You should have been with us Cave, it was magnificent. You’ve never been on a mating in these warm waters have you? I’ve never seen anything like it – thousands of canoes covering the waves for as far as you can see. Sail upon sail – and dyed all the colours of the spectrum …’

Her eyes were alight as she recalled the images and I began to wonder if it had been the mating or the foray that had left the most impression on her. I did not remind her that I had not been on a mating of any kind ever.

‘Excitement swept over the water as heavy and tangible as the scent of ambergris and it made me giddy and weak just to be near to the jostling craft – I was in Tangiia’s canoe and luckily he managed to keep his head, and skirt the large area where all the boats were locked into a solid mass of heaving Satawals. We obviously lost a few of our people to the attractions of the main event, even one or two of our officers, but the majority remained loyal to the objective. To some men physical violence generates just as much excitement as sex. There was one man – an ugly little dwarf with blackened teeth,
who took it on himself to be my personal bodyguard. Unfortunately he died in the attack, fighting a Soal just his height. I won’t forget that midnight grin for a long time to come …’