John Rackham (7 page)

"And if you wanted to put up a building
like this one we are in now?" Bragan challenged. "You would think,
and then decide, and then build it, all by yourself? Old man, do you take me
for a fool?"

Mordin
furrowed his craggy face in wonder. "Many of us talked a long time about
this building, many of us with varied skills. Then we decided together. And
then we built it. What other way is there?"

Bragan
felt it was his turn to be baffled, but he kept his face stiff, and filed that
line of thought for future reference.

"When Zorgan rules here," he
declared, "we will teach you other and better ways. Faster ways. We will
teach you how to construct buildings ten times as big as this and more durable.
And many other things. How to make better and faster aircraft, better road
transport, many skills. We will show you how to generate more power. We will
make everything better, and with less work, because we know a great deal about
how to make machines which will do the work for us, and for you."

"And weapons for
killing?"

"Those
too," Bragan nodded, suddenly intent. Mordin shrugged.

"We
have no need of them. Or of any of the other things. We have all the buildings
we need, all the food we need, all the power we need. We do not want machines
to do our work for us. What would be the sense of that? And we have no need of
weapons, either. We do not kill, except sometimes when we hunt for food."

Bragan
took the stunner from its pouch in his belt and laid it on a table close by. A
small neon glowed in its recess above the firing stud, to show that it was
powered. He gestured to it, eyed Mordin. "Think, man," he suggested,
"what you are saying. That small object there, is powerl It has no bottom.
With it, with that one weapon alone, I could destroy every man, woman and child
on Scarta, one at a time, and it would still be working at the end. Think of
thatl"

Before
Mordin could fashion a reply the personal radio on Bragan's wrist tweeted an
urgent summons and he raised it to his mouth.

"Yes?"

"Bragan?
Karsh here. Something's gone wrong, damned wrong! We've lost Unit Fourl Blanked
right out. Not a peep out of her!"

"Without warning?" Bragan demanded,
incredulously.

"Not
a glimmer! Reports trickling in steady—and then nothing! Hold on! Oh no! There
goes Two, exacdy the same. Total blackout!"

Karsh
was babbling. Bragan put an edge on his voice. "Get a grip on yourself,
man! There must be an explanation. Sound the alert—" He let the sentence
die in mid-air as he saw the little neon telltale on his stunner wink out.

He
felt all the complex of servos and services of his body-armor dwindle and go
inert, and know, split seconds before the ground shockwave came to hammer his
feet and shudder the building around him, that the ship was gone. Unit One was
dead! For one sagging moment he was shocked stilL Then, desperately, he threw
the idea away. It didn't matter now. Time to think about it later. Accept it.
Face it. What now? He surged back from Mordin, and the single step brought one
urgency hard into focus. The body-armor was now a hindrance, not. a help.

He
reacted instantly, slapped buckles and fasteners, tore the inert equipment
clear, then hesitated in momentary indecision. Mordin curled a lip at him in
grim understanding.

"What now,
Zorgan?" he challenged.

Bragan
had no time for badinage. His mind spun frantically, juggling a thousand
possibilities at once, seeking a pattern. He stepped rapidly back to the
discarded armor and grabbed a long-bladed chrome-steel machete, the only weapon
still operable. Sparking intuition warned him that the Scar-tanni must have
planned further ahead than just the simple destruction of the ship, however
they had done it. They would attack in some way. No point, then, in joining up
with troopers. They'd be an obvious mark. He had to get away.

Alone!
He spun and caught up a heavy chair, clasped it to his chest with the legs
aimed in front, and ran full-tilt against the far wall.

The impact winded him and hurt his ribs, but
he went through, snorting and coughing in a shower of shards and dust, to find
himself in
a
smaller and deserted room. Memory served to
help him guess where he was. He aimed at a wall again, full-tilt, grunted at
the shock, blew the clouds of stone-dust from his mouth and nostrils, and he
was outside. He discarded the chair, made another fast guess, and ran. Across
the sidewalk, leaping the gutter, and off to his left down the road. He hoped,
was reasonably sure, that he was heading directly away from the ship. If so,
then not too far ahead there should be the river, and a bridge. Then some
lesser buildings, a warehouse or two, more small buildings, and then open
country. There was no point, now, in thinking any farther than that. If he got
that far he would be lucky and it would be time to plan again.

Spitting
stone-dust from his mouth and slapping it from his clothes, he ran steadily,
not too fast, knowing he had
a
long
way to go. As he ran he had time to harry his mind with the big question.
How—had they managed to scupper the ship? He could imagine all kinds of
threats, as any good commander must, but never for one moment had he imagined
the loss of the ship. Of all six ships, in fact. It was safe to assume that, he
thought. If they could knock out Four, then Two, then
Ons,
in rapid succession, then
the rest were out too, by this time. A coordinated effort, obviously. But how,
and with what? The question bubbled in his mind and brought fear, but no
answers. He let it go and concentrated on his running.

And
braked to a skidding halt at a corner, warned by the noise of conflict.
Carefully edging, he peered around and saw a skimmer flat down on the road,
powerless and useless. And five troopers, backed into a huddle and struggling
clumsily in armor to defend themselves against the agile onslaught of about
thirty Scartanni. There were men and women in even proportions, and each one
armed with a metal rod of some kind, dodging and leaping in and out, pausing
only to deliver a hefty wallop and away.

The troopers had no chance at all. The armor
that took some of the sting of the blows also took all the spring out of their
movements. As Bragan watched, heaving for breath, he saw one man go down
heavily. And he couldn't get up, not with that dead load on him. The Scartanni
pressed harder. A faceplate shattered, and another man went down.

Bragan
turned away, chose a side-turning, and ran on, laboring for breath and with
sagging hopes. He was not a superstitious man, but the dread fingers of fear
began to reach for him now, to tell him that this was unnatural work, that
these odd people must have some strange powers. All at once he heard a whooping
cry away to his left and one frantic glance showed him a whole pack of them
after him, running like deer.

He wheeled away and fled down a side street
with the splatter of leather-shod feet loud at his heels. Scrambling around the
far comer he almost ran headlong into another swarm. Backing, sobbing for
breath, he wheeled away into another lane and ran on, hopelessly. Reason told
him to stand still and give up, but panic had his legs and kept them pumping
and plunging, dodging and staggering, with always the
pad-pad
of soft feet close behind. Until he could run
no more. . . .

He
shambled to a wall, turned and set his shoulders against it, held out his
nine-inch blade and waited for the first one rash enough to come close. But
they weren't so easily drawn. They held off, ringed him, mocked him with feints
and gestures.

One white-toothed blonde woman shook the hair
from her pretty face and jeered, "Surrender, Zorganl Surrender!" and
the rest took up the cry. He wasted no breath in trying to reply.

Braced against the wall, he held the
razor-edged blade ready, heaved for oxygen, and waited for the first one to
come close enough. Then the wall crumbled at his back and a brawny arm went
around his neck, jamming his chin high and up. Something hard struck the back
of his head and all his thoughts went dark. It was all over....

In such a moment, and with a man like Bragan,
the assumption of death is very strong. He came out of a painful darkness with
great reluctance, unwilling to believe that he was going to live again. It took
considerable effort to force the conclusion that he was not yet dead. They
hadn't killed him.

Accepting
that, he worked at breathing, at gingerly moving his arms and legs, wincing at
the pain until he could gather it all together in one pounding lump and locate
it in his head. Then, by degrees, he established
a
few more things. He was lying flat on his back on something firm but
yielding. He was not bound or fastened in any way. He was in gloom but not
darkness, and on the inside of what seemed to be a stone box.

Making
the effort, he sat up, swung his legs to a stone floor that was cool to his
feet. Investigating more, he found the walls smooth and hard to touch, with no
opening that he could see, but a steady fresh draft slid in from under the
shelf he had been lying on. The faint light came from
a
glowing panel in one wall. When he leaned on it, it gave fractionally,
indicating that it might be a door of some kind. Calling it a door, he found a
metal ring set in it, but it did nothing in response to pull or push or twist.

He returned to his bed and sat, and tried to
think. He was a prisoner, in
a
solid
and substantial cell. That, all by itself, was a facet of the Scartanni people
that he hadn't known of, nor even suspected. He had no idea where he was, and
no point from which to start guessing. Nor had he any idea what was in store
for him, and no point in guessing about it, either. He sat and ached awhile. He
had no idea what had happened to the ships. He had no idea where the swarms of
Scartanni had come from, all of them so suddenly. In fact, he hadn't much idea
about anything anymore. He tried delicate fingers to the throbbing lump at the
back of his head, and felt cloth. A dressing of some kind? That was
reassurance, at least. A little.

He
had almost dozed off, despite the pain in his head, when a light flared in the
roof of his cell, and seconds later the panel-that-was-a-door swung open,
outwards. In the opening stood a youngish woman. Her tabard-tunic, hip-long,
was dark blue. She held a tray and looked at him over
a
thin vapor that rose from the pots on it.

"Will
you eat?" she asked, and the question had its wry side.

"If it is all right,
yes, I would like to. You're very kind."

She
came on in, set the tray down beside him and seated herself on the far side of
it. She looked at him curiously. "We have little experience of keeping
prisoners, except what we have learned from you. And we think the starvation
idea was unwise. To lose freedom is enough."

"Enough for
what?"

"To provoke desperate action. Several of
your people have been hurt, some killed. That is regrettable, but you gave us
no choice."

Bragan stared down at the tray while he
thought that one over. He saw a kind of biscuit or cake, a bowl of thick soup,
another bowl of what looked like fruit, a jug from which vapor was curling, and
two mugs.

"Will
you join me?" he invited. "Unless you have objections to eating with
an enemy."

"You are no longer an enemy," she
told him, grabbed the jug and began to pour a creamy white liquid into the mug.
"You have a number of wrong ideas about us, that's alL They can easily be
put right."

"Indeed!" He took a biscuit,
moistened it with the soup as she did, and tried a bite. It was good. He shook
his head at her. "You know," he said, "I speak your language,
and I have studied you as a people, as far as possible. It is my job to
understand people, but I confess I don't come anywhere near understanding you.
I
am
your enemy. I am Denzil Bragan—"

"Supreme Executive of Zorgan," she
completed prompdy. "Yes, I know. I am Ryth o'Mordin."

"Hallex Mordin's
daughter? I think I would have guessed."

In
fact she did have something of the old man's look, and his air of utter
competence, the same cool resolve in her gray eyes. But, for all the
resemblances, she was different. She was attractive. Her thick blonde hair was
caught back from her face with a blue cord that matched her tunic. When she
smiled, showing a dazzle of white teeth, Bragan caught himself in the act of
smiling back, and wondered what was happening to him.