John Rackham (15 page)

The
wire went slack in his grasp. He peered out to see her on the floor far below,
waving. He waved back, then caught the other end of his wire and made a quick
hitch around his own waist. One final look around made
him
stare at the
discarded strands and strips of her restraint Better to remove them, he
thought, and made haste to gather them up and drop them through the bars. Then,
according to the scheme he had already worked out in his mind, he slid through
the gap, and hung there while he heaved the bars back to where they were
before. Now let the giant think she had gone up and along the rod, alone. He
took hold of the down wire and paid it out until it came tight against his own
weight. And now he was able to let himself down by letting that wire pass up,
walking it hand over hand rapidly. Until he came to the end and saw, with
relief, that he was only a yard or two from the floor.

"Stand away!" he warned,
then
let himself fall, rolled nimbly, heaved on the wire,
and brought it all down to the floor in a coiling rush. "That will
do," he declared, wrapping it quickly about one arm. "When Garmel
comes to look, he will see no sign of aid, and will be driven to think that you
broke your own bonds and escaped up and along the rod."

"You are very clever." She gripped
his arm excitedly. "You must be a great man on your own world, Jack!"

"No!"
He met her shining eyes for a moment,
then
looked
away. "I am only a humble freeman, of no great consequence. But for a
curious accident I would not be here at all!"

"Then
I am thankful for that accident. What do we do now?"

"We
collect the evidence of your confinement, and then we run
...
there
...
into that hole." As he spoke he felt the distant but nearing thump of
heavy feet and the cavernous rumble of giant voices. "Forget the patches.
That is Garmel returning. Come on!" They ran frantically across the floor
to the hole and in, then turned to huddle, shoulder to shoulder, and listen.

"I
think perhaps my singing bird will amuse you for a moment, Kartral, although I
confess that I grow a trifle weary of her piping. According to the brain-probe
such noises are held in great esteem by her kind, but I find them a bore after
a while. Her sensory reactions, now, are quite different."

"Each to his own!"
This was a different voice, equally booming.
"I find the little people repulsive. They remind me of grats, without
hair."

"I
grant you that much, but one needs some kind of distraction over the long
time-periods of monotony....
Blood and bones!"
Jack cringed against the rage he had anticipated, felt Silvana clutch him in
momentary terror. "The mewling bitch has escaped! See, Kartral—the cage is
bent!"

"You'll
catch it, of course?" It would have been ludicrous in any other moment to
hear such a vast voice so instantly nervous. "You can't have the little
pest crawling about. It might breed or something!"

"That's not likely. And she can't get
far. Ill
bring
Fervil in here, later on, let her get
the scent.
One of my pet proos, excellent creatures for
keeping down vermin.
Ah well, you didn't miss much, Kartral. I was
thinking of discarding her to the protein-banks anyway. I will have to get
something else to keep me amused." The vast boots shuffled and turned to
tramp away again.

"Speaking
of breeding," the new voice boomed, "the station-keeper of BB5
Tangent has a whole vivarium of the little beasts. Seven or eight females, and
a male, and he breeds them. I hear it's an interesting process to watch

...
almost
human, you know. But he hasn't been
able to rear any of the young...."

The
thudding and booming cut off suddenly with the closing door, and Jack let out a
thankful breath, shivering as rage boiled up inside him.

"Did
you understand what they were saying?" Silvana murmured in his ear.

"Didn't
you?" He turned, to find her face very close to his.

"Not
a word. That wiring
...
Garmel had
some kind of device structured into those so that I could understand his
language and he mine, but without that it is just a lot of noise."

"I
see!" Jack realized that without his helmet he would be unable to
understand her, either, and explained. "Garmel thinks you have escaped.
That's all right. He plans to bring a pet cat-creature of his here to chase
you, later, but don't worry about it!" he added quickly, as she shivered.
"You won't be in any danger while I'm here. Come now; follow me."

Finding the way back into the brain-room and
to the ladder-strip was enough to keep his superficial faculties occupied, but
it left the lower levels of his mind free to wonder. GarmePs brain-probe said
that she was a famous singer. He could believe it. She was obviously a
"somebody" on her own world, a thought that served to remind him of
his own humble origin. Reaching the ladder-strip, he went up slowly and
steadily, giving her a chance to keep up, turning at the flat top to help her
reach her feet She clung to his hand, came close, hugged him impulsively,
shaking with relief.

"That was awful!" she breathed.
"I have no head for heights at
all!"

"And
yet you came, without a word. That was very brave."

"Brave?"
Her voice was muffled against his chest. "What has bravery to do with it
when one has no choice? I've prayed for death a few times since I fell into
Garmel's hands."

"How
did that happen anyway?
How come someone like you to be
involved in a war?"

"Not
in any way to be proud of, Jack. Fate saw fit to bless me with a shapely body
and a talent for song. I have no military skills, but when it is a life and
death struggle one wants to help. And there was talk of making up a group of
entertainers, to visit various training centers and

...
amuse
and divert the fighting men. Of course I
agreed. Spaceships are bleak places. . . . What is that?" She shoved away
from him in alarm and he whirled as they both heard a curious
pattering-chittering sound. There, scurrying across the flat plain of the
cabinet top
came
a beetle. Jack recalled Haldar's word
for it, but he had not dreamed of anything so enormous, or so hideously hairy.
By reflex he tried to shake his bow into his hand, but it caught on the wire
coil. More urgently, he crouched and shed the coil, shoved it vigorously into
the beetle's path and stood back and aside, seeing it snatch and hoist the wire
with a pincer the size of a man's hand. He heard the jaws grate on the wire
quite distinctly as the creature paused for a moment. Then he had his bow in
hand, arrow nocked and half-ready, but with no clear idea what to aim for. The
beetle cast the coil of wire away with a twitch of its claw and came on,
antennae waving. Jack^rew string to chin and drove a shaft straight into one
multifaceted eye, sprang aside while he fitted a second shaft. The creature
jerked, recoiled for a moment,
then
came on again,
pincers clicking furiously. Jack released again, ruined the other eye, and it
stopped once more, scrabbling furiously at its head with its pincers.

Tm
a fool!
Jack
thought, slinging his bow and dragging out his beamer, checking that it was set
on zero. Dodging aside, he aimed and sliced the front part of the creature from
the rest of it. Trotting three steps, he did it again, and stared as it
continued to react vigorously in three separate pieces. His nostrils were
assaulted by a bitter stench. He waited a moment more, just to be sure,
then
turned to Silvana. "The thing takes a time to die.
I fear my arrows were a waste of time!" Then he saw how pale she was.
"It is all right. There's no danger to you now." He took her arm, and
she shook.

"What kind of man are you?" she
whispered. "You wear the garb, the equipment, and the look, too, of a man
from my own Maramelle.
A woodsman.
Yet you also have
and use the weapons and technology of a vastly different culture. I do not
understand. What are you?"

"Does
it matter? I am what I said I
was,
a freeman farmer, a
yeoman.
A nobody
. Wait a moment while I retrieve my
shafts." To his relief he was able to hack his arrows free without
getting all messed up with ichor.
I must ask Haldar,
he mused,
how
to kill a beetle quickly. There must be a lethal spot.
Then he went back to her, ignoring the
puzzled look in her eyes, and took her arm to urge her on their way.

"We
will be with my friends soon," he told her. "They are devising some
plan to destroy this station. You will know more of it than I do, but I
understand, as Jasar has it, that this station holds a key spot in the Hilax
force, and that if it is put out of action it will be a great blow for the
Salviar side. I would imagine you would want to help with that."

They
were striding along as he spoke; he tried to evade her attempts to grasp his
hand, but she persisted, and took his fingers, holding them.

"How
do you come to be party to such a wild enterprise?" she asked. "And
why are you not helping them now, at this moment?"

"I
would be little help to them. I know nothing at all of power-machines, or
detector alarms, or any other of this magic stuff."

"What made you leave
them and come to rescue me?"

"I
heard you singing. Jasar and Haldar have it in mind to destroy this whole
station. They hope to escape if the possibility offers, naturally, but they
count that second. I had heard you sing. I had seen you. I counted that more
important."

Her
grasp tightened on his fingers. "No one has ever valued me, or my voice,
quite so highly as that before.
To risk even one life for
it."

"Do
not count it too high," he said uncomfortably. "My life is not worth
so very much." Under her gentle questioning he told her the essence of
his life so far, and the remarkable coming of Jasar to offer him an honorable escape.

"Shame on you," she cried, not too
severely. "You would have deserted your mother in her hour of need?"

"It
was for the best!" he insisted. "Do you think I liked doing it? But
now, since she cannot be responsible for debt, and she has the small holding,
she will soon find another well-set man to comfort her.
Which
is what she really needs most.
Here, I think, is where we start to go
down."

They came to the jewel-racks and he heard her
cry out in wonder at the great store of sparkling gems on either side. "Do
you realize," she gasped, "that any one of these jewels is worth a
small kingdom, or more? It seems part of all the wrongness of war that such
beautiful things should be put to such a base use. They create power, I believe?"

"That
is as much as I know," Jack agreed. "I have heard it said that great
wealth is also
power
, of a different kind." In
his mind was the addition mat this was not the only great beauty that was being
wasted because of war. On Earth, at least only the men killed each other. But
he left all that unsaid and led her on to the level where the crackle of power
filled the air. Her hair lifted and drifted in the tension, spitting small
sparks as she tried to smooth it down.

"I
do not see your friends," she said, and hardly had she spoken when here
came
Jasar, climbing up from a lower level, with Haldar
following him. The small scout came forward to a decent distance, then halted
and made a stiff bow.

"Jasar-am-Bax is truly honored to make
your acquaintance."

"This
is Silvana of Maramelle," Jack offered, and she put out her hand for Jasar
to touch. "And the other is Haldar Villar, of Berden."

"No
need to tell me whom I am meeting, Jack." Haldar stiffened, made a solemn
bow. "All Strella knows Lady Silvana of Maramelle. My very great . .
."

Jack
thought he caught the ghost of a signal from her, and a quick eyebrow lift from
Haldar, but he couldn't be sure. Haldar took her hand anyway. "A great
honor anyway, and a pleasure. Had I known who it was who sang . . ."

"This is no time to speak of what might
have
been," she said quietly, "nor
to dwell
on honors and pleasures of
a
different kind of life. As I see it, we are
alike
hunted, in danger, and doing what we can in a cause we believe to be right. In
that much I am very glad to be with you. All I ask is that you tell me what I
can do to help." The difference in her was subtle but distinct now. Jack
saw it as
a
kind
of dignity she had put on, the firm lift of her chin and bosom, making nothing
of the ragged cloth about her waist. Like a queen, he thought, and felt his
heart sink
a
little.