The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (66 page)

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Authors: Vernor Vinge

BOOK: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
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Hrala turned back to the Termiter Priests. She was smiling, and the anger was gone from her words; mocking arrogance remained.
“Says she’s happy to fight, but it’s no … fun … wasting
Death
on such easy prey as the Termiters. She’ll fight with whatever weapons her opponent chooses.”
That almost started the chant again. The priests shouted it down, and after a moment one of them carried a sword-club toward Hrala/Tatja. This fellow was no fighter, just an errand boy. He laid the club on the ground ten feet from the girl, then scuttled back to safety. Hrala let him depart, then stepped from the high ground to inspect the weapon.
“If she’s from deep Inland, she’s never seen a sword-club,” said Tredi. “Spears and pikes are all the Inlanders have. Even on the coast, it’s a ceremonial weapon.”
This one was clearly for special occasions; the wood was polished, unmarred. Without metals or composite materials, true swords were impossible. It looked deadly all the same. In overall shape it was something between a club and a pike. Elaborate hooks and blades, of bone or obsidian, were set along its length. There was a spike of glassy blackness at one end, and a hilt at the other. A second grip was set halfway down the pole; perhaps the thing could be used like a quarterstaff.
Hrala/Tatja picked it up, clearly as mystified as Rey. Somehow the puzzlement didn’t take her out of character: she smiled her curiosity, seeming to say
how interesting, how clever
. He couldn’t tell if she were acting or if this were the same frank wonderment he’d seen in her before. She swung it through a couple of clean arcs, then paused, glanced hesitantly at Cor and the others. Rey understood; this was her last chance to cut and run. Cor started toward her, but the girl turned away and shouted at the priests.
“She says she’s ready.”
Rey scarcely realized he was holding his breath. The girl
could win.
The spear carriers were already sold on the fraud; none of them could fight effectively. The more cynical priests weren’t fooled, but they were exactly the sort that let others do their fighting. Who did that leave? Mental subnormals, too stupid to be afraid?
The crowd of priests parted and someone very broad and heavy started up the incline toward Tatja Grimm. The man’s gait was slow, almost shambling. Even from here Rey could see the dullness in his features.
Thank the Light!
Then he saw the second one.
They were nearly identical—giant, stupid … and armed. They carried
their sword-clubs before them, both as threat and shield. Each was dressed in heavy leather. It was primitive armor, but at least real; Tatja Grimm was virtually naked, what armor she wore a gaudy fake.
Together, they outweighed her three to one.
The two separated as they approached the girl. They stopped ten feet from her, and for a moment the combatants stared at each other. Rey thought he saw traces of anxiety in the dullards’ manner; you’d have to be a vegetable to ignore the mood of the Villagers and the deadly confidence that came from the enemy.
Twenty years of fantasy collided with reality tonight—and for an instant the fantasy seemed the truer vision. The scene would have made a perfect cover painting: Hrala standing straight and fearless before a pair of subhuman attackers, a city of towers spreading on and on behind her. The last blue had disappeared from Seraph’s eastern ocean. The disk shaded from brighter reds to darker. The cloud of tarry smoke from the pet’ vats still hung in the air, roiling Seraph’s continents out of all recognition. Everything—towers, prisoners, priests, fighters—was lit with shifting reds. It was the color of blood,
Hrala’s color
, the background color of her most chilling battles.
A priest shouted at the swordsmen, and the moment passed. They came in from opposite sides, their bladed clubs swinging. The girl grabbed her club at the hilt and foregrip and whirled between them. They were slow, and Tatja Grimm was terribly quick. That could only save her from quick death: she danced backwards, up the rise. She used the club like a staff, blocking. Blade fragments flew from every blow.
She bounded three great steps back, and moved both hands to the hilt of the club. She swung it in a quick sweep, her greater reach keeping the two back—till they separated again and came at her from the sides. Even so, she wasn’t retreating now.
“She learns very fast,” Tredi said to no one in particular.
But some lessons are learned the hard way. The bladed hooks were good for more than terror and disemboweling. One of her parries brought a crashing halt; her club had locked with the attacker’s. The swordsman raised his club, swinging her slender body against him. Tatja kicked and kneed him. Even in his armor, the fellow staggered beneath the blows. The second attacker ran forward, rammed the point of his club squarely at the girl’s torso. Somehow she sensed the attack, and threw herself backwards. The impaling thrust was turned into a deep slash across her chest.
She hit the ground and bounced instantly to her feet. For a moment the action stopped and the antagonists stared at each other, shocked. In the smoky red dimness, details were vague … yet the fake bosom still seemed to be in place. Everyone could see that the armor around her
chest had been slashed open. Everyone could see the ripping wound across her breasts. Everyone could see that Hrala
did not bleed.
The second swordsman stepped backwards and whimpered. His tiny brain finally realized that he should be terrified. He dropped his club and ran from both priests and Hrala.
The first fellow didn’t seem to notice. He flipped Hrala’s club over his head and advanced on her. She didn’t retreat, didn’t try to rush around him to the discarded clubs; she stood with knees slightly bent, hands held open. Only when the bladed club swung toward her middle did she move—and then it was too fast for Rey to follow. Somehow she caught the foregrip of the club, used it as a brace to swing her body up and ram her foot into the other’s throat. The blow jarred the club loose, and the two fell in an apparently random tangle. But only one combatant rose from that fall. The other lay twitching, the point of a sword-club struck through his skull.
The girl stared at the dying man. A look that might have been horror passed across her face; her arms and shoulders were shaking. Suddenly she straightened and stepped back. When she looked at the priests, haughty pride was back in her features.
“Hrala. Hra-la. Hra La. Hra La …” The chant began again. This time, no priest dared shout it down.
CORONADAS ASCUASENYA HAD PLENTY OF CONTACT WITH THE RESCUED DURING the next few days. Some recovered from the horror better than others. Janna Kats could laugh with good humor within ten hours of the rescue. The little anthropologist, Tredi Bekjer, was almost as cool, though it would be some time before his body recovered.
But four days out from the Village, some of the
Science
people were still starting at shadows, crying without provocation. And for every survivor, there would always be nightmares.
Cor had never considered herself especially brave, but she hadn’t been trapped in that pit; she hadn’t seen friends torture-murdered. Once they returned to the Barge, and the Village was irrevocably behind them, it was easy to put the terror from her mind. She could enjoy the Welcoming Back, the honor given her and Rey Guille and Brailly Tounse, the greater honor given Tatja Grimm.
It was as close to a storybook ending as could be imagined. Thirty-six from the
Science
had died, but nearly one hundred had survived the adventure and would return with the Barge (much to the surprise of their sponsoring universities, who hadn’t expected to see them for two years). When Tarulle sailed into the Osterlais—and later the Tsanarts—everyone would be instant celebrities. It would be the story of the decade, and an immensely profitable affair for the Tarulle Publishing
Company. Whatever their normal job slot, every literate participant in the rescue had been ordered to write an account of the operation. There was talk of starting a whole new magazine to report such true adventures.
And management seemed to think that Cor and Rey had masterminded this publishing coup. After all, he had suggested the landing; she had produced Tatja/Hrala. Cor knew how much this bothered Rey. He had tried to convince Svektr Ramsey that he had fallen into things without the least commercial savvy. Of course, Ramsey knew that, but he wasn’t about to let Rey wriggle free. So Guille was stuck with producing the centerpiece account of the rescue.
“Don’t worry about it, Boss. They don’t want the truth.” She and the
Fantastie
editor were standing at the railing of the top editorial deck. Except for the masts and Jespen Tarulle’s penthouse, this was as high as you could get on the Barge. It was one of Cor’s favorite places: a third of the Barge’s decks were visible from here, and the view of the horizon was not blocked by rigging and sails. It was early and the morning bustle had not begun. A cold salt wind came steadily from the east. That air was so clean—not a trace of tarry smoke. White tops showed across miles of ocean. Nowhere was there sign of land. It was hard to imagine any place farther from the Village of the Termite People.
Rey didn’t answer immediately. He was watching something on the print deck. He drew his jacket close, and looked at her. “It doesn’t matter. We can write the truth. They won’t understand. Anyone who wasn’t there, won’t understand.” Cor had been there. She
did
understand … but wished she didn’t.
Rey turned back to watch the print deck, and Cor saw the object of his interest. The man wore ordinary fatigues. He wandered slowly along the outer balcony of the deck. He was either lonely, or bored—or fascinated by every detail of the railing and deck. Cor suspected the fellow wasn’t bored: part of the Hrala fraud had been the demand that the Termiters replace her damaged “property” (the dead from Brailly’s party and the
Science
). It seemed unwise to retract the demand completely, so five unfortunate Villagers were taken aboard.
This was one of them; he had been a Termiter priest—their spokesman /interpreter. Cor had talked to him several times since the rescue; he made very good copy. He turned out to be a real innocent, not one of the maniacs or hard core cynics. In fact, he had fallen from favor when the cynics pushed for trial by combat. He had never left the Village before; all his Spräk came from reading magazines and talking to travelers. What had first seemed a terrible punishment was now turning out to be the experience of his lifetime. “The guy’s a natural scholar, Boss. We drop the others off at the first hospitable landing, but I hope he
wants to stay. If he could learn about civilization, return home in a year or so … he could do his people a lot of good. They’ll need to understand the outside world when the petroleum hunters come.”
Rey wasn’t paying attention. He pointed further down the deck.
It was Tatja Grimm. She was looking across the sea, her tall form slumped so her elbows rested on the railing and her hands cupped her chin. The ex-priest must have seen her at that instant. He came to an abrupt halt, and his whole body seemed to shiver.
“Does he
know?
”
Rey shook his head. “I think he does now.”
In many ways the girl was different from that night at the Village. Her hair was short and red. Without the fake bust, she was a skinny pre-teener—and by her bearing, a discouraged one. But she was nearly six feet tall, and her face was something you would never forget after that night. The priest walked slowly toward her, every step a struggle. His hands grasped the railing like a lifeline.
Then the girl glanced at him, and for an instant it seemed the Termiter would run off. Instead, he bowed … and they talked. From up on the editorial deck, Cor couldn’t hear a word. Besides, they were probably speaking Hurdic. It didn’t matter. She could imagine the conversation.
They were an odd combination: the priest sometimes shaking, sometimes bowing, his life’s beliefs being shot from under him; the girl, still slouched against the railing, paying more attention to the sea than to the conversation. Even during the Welcoming Back she had been like this. The praise had left her untouched; her listless replies had come from far away, punctuated by an occasional calculating look that Cor found more unsettling than the apathy.
After several minutes, the priest gave a final bow, and walked away. Only now, he didn’t need the railing. Cor wondered what it must be like to suddenly learn that supernatural fears were unnecessary. For herself, the turn of belief was in the opposite direction.
Rey said, “There’s a rational explanation for Tatja Grimm. For years we’ve been buying Contrivance Fiction about alien invaders. We were just too blind to see that it’s finally happened.”
“A visitor from the stars, eh?” Cor smiled weakly.
“Well, do you have a better explanation?”
“ … No.” But Cor knew Tatja well enough to believe her story. She really was from the Interior. Her tribe’s only weapons were spears and hand axes. Their greatest “technical” skill was sniffing out seasonal springs. She’d run away when she was eight. She moved from tribe to tribe—always toward the more advanced ones. She never found what she was looking for. “She’s a very quick learner.”
“Yeah. A quick learner. Tredi Bekjer said that, too. It’s the key to
everything. I should have caught on the minute I heard how Jimi found her ‘praying’ to the noontime shadow of her quarterstaff. There she had reproduced one of the great experiments of all time—and I put it down to religion! You’re right; there’s no way she could be from an advanced civilization. She didn’t recognize my telescope. The whole idea of magnification was novel to her … . Yet she understood the principle as soon as she saw the mirror.”

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