Planet of Adventure Omnibus (25 page)

Reith turned
away, half-sickened. He climbed aboard the raft. “Back across the mountains, to
our own men.”

The raft joined
the militia at the agreed rendezvous, a gully half a mile south of Belbal Gap.
The militia set off down the hill, keeping to the cover of trees and
moss-hedge. Reith remained with the raft, searching the sky through the
scanscope, apprehensive of Blue Chasch reconnaissance rafts. As he watched, a
score of rafts rose from Dadiche to fly at full speed to the east: apparently
reinforcement for the beleaguered war-party. Reith watched them disappear over
Belbal Gap. Turning the scanscope back toward Dadiche, he glimpsed a sparkle of
white uniforms up under the walls. “Now,” he told Anacho. “As good a time as
any.”

The raft slid
down toward the main portal into Dadiche: closer and closer. The guards,
conceiving the raft to be one of their own, craned their necks in perplexity.
Reith, steeling himself, pulled the trigger of the forward sand-blast. The way
into Dadiche was open. The Pera militia surged into the city.

Jumping down
from the raft, Reith sent two platoons to seize the raft depot. Another platoon
remained at the portal with the greater part of the sand-blasts and energetics.
Two platoons were sent to patrol the city and enforce the occupation.

These last
two platoons, as fierce and unrelenting as any other inhabitants of Tschai,
ranged through the half-deserted avenues, killing Blue Chasch and Chaschmen,
and any Chaschwomen who offered resistance. The discipline of two days swiftly
evaporated; a thousand generations of resentment exploded into blood-lust and
massacre.

Reith, with
Anacho, Traz and six others, rode the raft to the District Technical Center.
The doors were closed; the building seemed vacant. The raft dropped beside the
center portal; sandblasts broke down the doors. Reith, unable to contain his
anxiety, ran into the building.

There, as before:
the familiar shape of the space-boat.

Reith
approached with heart thumping in his throat. The hull was cut open; the
drive-mechanisms, the accumulators, the converter: all had been removed. The
boat was a hulk.

The prospect
of finding the boat in near-operative condition had been an impossible dream.
Reith had known as much. But irrational optimism had persisted.

Now,
irrational optimism and all hope of return to Earth must be put aside. The boat
had been gutted. The engines had been dismantled, the drive-tank opened, the
exquisite balance of forces disrupted.

Reith became
aware of Anacho standing at his shoulder. “This is not a Blue Chasch
space-boat,” said Anacho reflectively. “Nor is it Dirdir, nor Wankh.”

Reith leaned
back against a bench, his mind drained of vigor. “True.”

“It is built
with great skill; it shows refined design,” mused Anacho. “Where was it built?”

“On Earth,”
said Reith.

“‘Earth’?”

“The planet
of men.”

Anacho turned
away, his bald harlequin-face pinched and drawn, the axioms of his own
existence shattered. “An interesting concept,” he murmured over his shoulder.

Reith looked
somberly through the space-boat but found little to interest him. Presently he
returned outside, where he received a report from the platoon guarding the portal.
Remnants of the Blue Chasch army had been sighted coming down the mountainside,
in sufficient numbers to suggest that they had finally beaten off the Green
Chasch.

Those
platoons which had been sent to patrol the city were completely out of control
and could not be recalled. Two platoons held the landing field, leaving only a
single platoon at the portal-something over a hundred men.

An ambush was
prepared. The portal was returned to the similitude of normalcy. Three men
disguised as Chaschmen stood inside the wicket.

The remnants
of the war-force approached the portal. They noticed nothing amiss and started
to enter the city. Sand-blasts and energetics opened fire; the column withered,
dissipated. The survivors were too stunned to resist. A few tottered wildly
back into the parkland, pursued by yelling men in white uniforms; others stood
in a stupid huddle to be passively slaughtered.

The
battle-rafts were luckier. Observing the debacle, they swooped back up into the
sky. The militia-men, unfamiliar with the Blue Chasch ground guns, fired as
best they could and, more by luck than by skill, destroyed four rafts. The
others swung in high bewildered circles for five minutes, then bore south,
toward Saaba, Dkekme, Audsch.

Spasms of
fighting occurred throughout the rest of the afternoon, wherever the Peran
militia encountered Blue Chasch who sought to defend themselves. The
remainder-aged, females, imps alike-were slaughtered. Reith interceded with
some success on behalf of the Chaschmen and Chaschwomen, saving all but the
purple and gray-clad security guards, who shared the fate of their masters.

The remaining
Chaschmen and Chaschwomen, throwing aside their false crania, gathered in a
sullen crowd on the main avenue.

At sunset the
militia, sated with killing, burdened with loot and unwilling to prowl the dead
city after dark, assembled near the portal. Fires were built, food prepared and
eaten.

Reith, taking
pity on the miserable Chaschmen, whose world had suddenly collapsed, went to
where they sat in a dispirited group, the women keening softly for those who
were dead.

One burly
individual spoke up truculently. “What do you propose to do with us?”

“Nothing,”
said Reith. “We destroyed the Blue Chasch because they attacked us. You are
men; so long as you do us no harm, we shall do you none.”

The Chaschman
grunted. “Already you have harmed many of us.”

“Because you
chose to fight with the Chasch against men, which is unnatural.”

The Chaschman
scowled. “What is unnatural about that? We are Chaschmen, the first phase of
the great cycle.”

“Utter
nonsense,” said Reith. “You are no more Chasch than the Dirdirman yonder is
Dirdir. Both of you are men. The Chasch and the Dirdir have enslaved you,
plundered your lives. High time that you knew the truth!”

The
Chaschwomen halted their keening, the Chaschmen turned blank faces toward
Reith.

“So far as I
am concerned,” said Reith, “you can live as you like. The city of Dadiche is
yours-so long as the Blue Chasch do not return.”

“What do you
mean by that?” quavered the Chaschmen

“Precisely
what I said. Tomorrow we return to Pera. Dadiche is yours.”

“All very
well-but what if the Blue Chasch come back, from Saaba, from Dkekme, from the
Lizizaudre, as they surely will?”

“Kill them,
chase them away! Dadiche is now a city of men! And if you don’t believe that
the Blue Chasch victimized you, go look into the death-house under the wall.
You are told that you are larva, that the imp germinates in your brain. Go
examine the brains of dead Chaschmen. You will find no imps, only the brains of
men.

“So far as we
are concerned, you can return to your homes. The only proscription I put upon
you are the false heads. If you wear them we will consider you not men but Blue
Chasch and deal with you accordingly.”

Reith
returned to his own camp; diffidently, as if they could not believe Reith’s
statement, the erstwhile Chaschmen slipped off through the dusk for their
homes.

Anacho spoke
to Reith. “I listened to what you said. You know nothing about the Dirdir and
the Dirdirmen! Even were your theories valid, we would still remain Dirdirmen!
We recognize excellence, superlativity; we aspire to emulate the ineffable-an
impossible ideal, since Shade can never out-glow Sun, and men can never surpass
Dirdir.”

“For an
intelligent man,” snapped Reith, “you are extremely obstinate and
unimaginative. Someday I am sure you will recognize your error; until then,
believe whatever you care to believe.”

BEFORE DAWN
THE camp was astir. Drays laden with loot moved off westward, black against the
ale-colored sky.

In Dadiche,
the Chaschmen, peculiarly bald and gnomish without their false skulls,
collected corpses, carried them to a great pit and buried them. A score of Blue
Chasch had been flushed from hiding. The killing lust of the Perans having
subsided, they were confined in a stockade, from which they stared in
stone-eyed bewilderment at the coming and going of the men.

Reith was
concerned over the possibility of counterattack from the Blue Chasch cities to
the south. Anacho made light of the matter. “They have no stomach for fighting.
They menace the Dirdir cities with torpedoes, but only to avoid war. They never
challenge, they are content to live in their gardens. They might send Chaschmen
to harass us, but I suspect they will do nothing whatever, unless we threaten
them directly.”

“Perhaps so.”
Reith released the captive Blue Chasch. “Go to the cities of the south,” he
told them. “Inform the Blue Chasch of Saaba and Dkekme that if they molest us
we will destroy them.”

“It is a long
march,” croaked the Blue Chasch. “Must we go on foot? Give us one of the rafts!”

“Walk! We owe
you nothing!”

The Blue
Chasch departed.

Still not
wholly convinced that the Blue Chasch would refrain from seeking vengeance,
Reith ordered weapons mounted on those nine rafts captured at the Dadiche depot
and flew them to secluded areas on the hills.

On the
following day, in the company of Traz, Anacho and Derl, he explored Dadiche in
a more leisurely fashion. At the Technical Center he once more examined the
hulk of his spaceboat, with an eye to its ultimate repair. “If I had the full
use of this workshop,” he said, “and if I had the help of twenty expert
technicians, I might be able to build a new drive system. It might be more
practical to try to adapt the Chasch drive to the boat but then there would be
control problems ... Better to build a whole new boat.”

Derl frowned
at the quiet space-boat. “You are so intent, then, on departing Tschai? You
have not yet visited Cath. You might wish never to depart.”

“Possibly,”
said Reith. “But you have never visited Earth. You might not want to return to
Tschai.”

“It must be a
very strange world,” mused the Flower of Cath. “Are the women of Earth
beautiful?”

“Some of
them,” Reith replied. He took her hand. “There are beautiful women on Tschai,
as well. The name of one of them is-” And he whispered a name in her ear.

Blushing, she
put her hand to his mouth. “The others might hear!”

Two THOUSAND
MILES east of Pera, over the heart of the Dead Steppe, the sky-raft faltered,
flew smoothly for a moment, then jerked and bucked in a most ominous fashion.
Adam Reith looked aft in dismay, then ran to the control belvedere. Lifting the
voluted bronze housing, he peered here and there among the scrolls, floral
hatchings, grinning imp faces which almost mischievously camouflaged the
engine.
[ii]
He was joined by the Dirdirman Ankhe at afram Anacho.

Reith asked, “Do
you know what’s wrong?”

Anacho
pinched up his pale nostrils, muttered something about an “antiquated Chasch
farrago” and “insane expedition to begin with.” Reith, accustomed to the
Dirdirman’s foibles, realized that he was too vain to admit ignorance, too
disdainful to avow knowledge so crass.

The raft
shuddered again. Simultaneously from a four-pronged case of black wood to the
side of the engine compartment came small rasping noises. Anacho gave it a
lordly rap with his knuckles. The groaning and shuddering ceased. “Corrosion,”
said Anacho. “Electromorphic action across a hundred years or longer. I believe
this to be a copy of the unsuccessful Heizakim Bursa, which the Dirdir
abandoned two hundred years ago.”

“Can we make
repairs?”

“How should I
know such things? I would hardly dare touch it.

They stood
listening. The engine sighed on without further pause. At last Reith lowered
the housing. The two returned forward.

Traz lay
curled on a settee after standing a night watch. On the green crush-cushioned
seat under the ornate bow lantern sat the Flower of Cath, one leg tucked
beneath the other, head on her forearms, staring eastward toward Cath. So had
she huddled for hours, hair blowing in the wind, speaking no word to anyone.
Reith found her conduct perplexing. At Pera she had yearned for Cath; she could
talk of nothing else but the ease and grace of Blue Jade Palace, of her father’s
gratitude if Reith would only bring her home. She had described wonderful
balls, extravaganzas, water-parties, masques according to the turn of the “round.”
(“Round? What did she mean by ‘round’?” asked Reith. Ylin-Ylan, the Flower of
Cath, laughed excitedly. “It’s just the way things are, and how they become!
Everybody must know and the clever ones anticipate; that’s why they’re clever!
It’s all such fun!”) Now that the journey to Cath was actually underway the
Flower’s mood had altered. She had become pensive, remote, and evaded all
questions as to the source of her abstraction. Reith shrugged and turned away.
Their intimacy was at an end: all for the best, or so he told himself. Still,
the question nagged at him: why? His purpose in flying to Cath was twofold:
first, to fulfill his promise to the girl; secondly, to find, or so he hoped, a
technical basis to permit the construction of a spaceboat, no matter how small
or crude. If he could rely upon the cooperation of the Blue Jade Lord, so much
the better. Indeed, such sponsorship was a necessity.