The Tides of Kregen Page 6

  "Fear not, Pur Dray. Your Chuktar Tom returned in good time. Your Delia and your son, Drak, live."

  "Thank Zair!" I could say no more for a while, just put a hand to my face, and so we sat in silence.

  Then, quietly, she said, "Yes. Yes, you should thank Zair."

  Slowly I looked up at her.

  "Your son is a great man now. And your daughter has already refused five offers of marriage."

  "Good God!" I said, dumbfounded.

  "Time passes on Kregen as on this Earth, although not necessarily at the same rates, as you know. Reckoning in Earthly years, you left—" As she said "left" I know my fierce old lips twisted up, for the word more appropriate was "banished." She put a hand to her cloak and felt some object beneath, under the curve of her shoulder. "In Earthly years your son Drak was near fourteen and he is nigh on thirty-two now."

  At this I groaned. Aye, I, Dray Prescot, groaned. Thirty-two! Incredible and impossible and yet true. What years I had missed! As for Lela, in a life span of two hundred years or so, a maiden of thirty-two had no fears of the future or of being left on the shelf. I also knew this would make Segnik and Velia both twenty-one. My Delia had been twenty-one when we had first met, although it is a curious fact that on Kregen people appear to put little store by their ages or their birthdays. As to the latter, that is easily understood, I suppose, given the forty-year cycle, the absence of definite terrestrial years and the confusing mass of temporal measurements by the different moons. I became aware of Madam Zena Iztar looking at me with a quizzical gaze, almost a look of mockery.

  "And you will send me back, Madam Iztar, now?"

  "I stand here in a merely consultative capacity. You have been causing trouble and there is work for you to do. When the time comes you will know what the work is. To tell you now would invalidate your integrity." I guessed she spoke in these terms to conceal a blunter meaning.

  "Eighteen years!" I said. If the words came out of my mouth as a plea, I do not think I can be blamed.

  "The Savanti are a mere rump of a once proud people. They may well find a use for you yet, despite your flouting of their principles. As for the Star Lords, certain events on Kregen have not turned out as they expected—"

  "So they cannot see the future?"

  "Oh, they can riddle a future or two, but the trick is guessing which one will eventuate. They will use you again, Pur Dray, I am quite sure."

  "And can I resist them?"

  "You must try, if that is your wish. Your will may then receive help from . . ." Here she paused and smoothed her cloak reflectively so the black material shone in the lamps’ gleam. "I can say that the Star Lords are only partially to blame for some of your misfortunes; they are not omnipotent on Kregen — who is? — and intense effort of the will may deflect their hold."

  "And you will tell me nothing more of their purposes?"

  "There are many clues if you open your eyes." She spoke with an edge of testiness, very bracing. "But I will tell you no more. For one thing, even the Star Lords are divided among themselves. For another, to tell you what they think they plan to do will quite evidently, given their nature, cause them to do something else."

  "Out of spite? The Star Lords . . . out of spite?"

  "Not out of spite, you onker!"

  Then it was my turn to smile. How familiar that was!

  She looked around my room at the few belongings I had collected. "I must wake these poor famblys. Your Doctor Quinney proved a fine ponsho, Pur Dray."

  I had the grace to nod my head without speaking.

  "Now you have this tiresome business over the duel. After that — who knows? Even Grodno may play a part; stranger things than that have happened."

  Chancing a venture that might prove disastrous, for I saw she was arranging her cloak and gown and preparing to wake up my guests, I said, "And Lem the Silver Leem? Do you . . .?"

  She flashed those large brown eyes at me, very fierce and commanding. "If you obliterate Lem completely," and she said it with a fair old temper, I can tell you, "Then you would do well in the eyes of the people of Kregen — and of Earth."

  Before I could ask what she meant by that last alarming statement Doctor Quinney was starting forward, grinning, and the others were moving about and buzzing with the arrival of this formidable Madam Ivanovna in our midst. The meeting which followed meant nothing, of course. What ideas, what concepts, what conjectures flashed through my aching head!

  Eventually things were brought to a conclusion and an astral voice came from Madam Ivanovna in her part as a psychic; the voice chilled the company and satisfactorily ensured a fat check would pass from me to Doctor Quinney. Then we were saying our farewells. No one cared to partake of the refreshment Mrs. Benton had provided. I shook hands and ushered them out. As she passed me Zena Iztar smiled, a quick flash that was gone as soon as formed.

  "Good night, Mr. Prescot." She was very close and she bent a little forward, her words for me alone. "Remberee, Dray Prescot, Krozair of Zy. Remberee."

  I caught a flash from the black of her gown where the cloak lapped open. A tiny gem gleamed there, hidden before. I saw a jeweled representation of a cogwheel, a gearwheel, and I found myself thinking that this was a strange device, so mechanical, for one so psychic. Then she had gone and I was alone with Doctor Quinney. The check was written, dried and handed over. Quinney took it as a man accepts a flask of water in the burning deserts far south of Sanurkazz.

  "A pity," he said, folding the check, "that we were not honored with our lordship tonight."

  "A pity," I agreed two-facedly.

  "I hear he has taken a trip to Boulogne."

  "Has he? No doubt he has business there."

  As Doctor Quinney took himself off I determined that no one should know of my intention to catch the packet to Boulogne the next day.

  If you imagine I slept that night you could be right, for everything passed in a daze until I realized I was in Boulogne and must meet this lecherous, dandified earl the following morning at first light, when the air was cool and limpid and no curious observers would be around. My second, a courageous, empty-headed army officer with whom I had had a few skirmishes in India, was already in France. He met me on the appointed day, a polished mahogany box under his arm, with the information that all was ready, a doctor was in attendance and the carriage waited. With blinds pulled down we wheeled out along the seashore.

  Well, as with all my fights, this duel could mark the end of me. The weapons were to be pistols. I account myself a fine shot. I’d had plenty of experience in America. A pair of very fine London-made dueling pistols had come into my possession and I knew how they shot. The lordling would have his own, no doubt. I well remember a remarkable man in the Royal Navy who was the finest shot I have ever known. As he used to say, in his own tarpaulin way, "If I can see it I can hit it — if I know the gun."

  He had been a captain when I knew him and we had got along, for he was a man who, like myself, had come up onto the quarterdeck through the hawse hole. I would have liked him at my side on Kregen. His middle name was Abe, but only his family called him that, of course. I missed him. He was ten years older than myself, so if he still lived he’d be one hundred and two years old. With a pang I recollected myself. He lived on Earth, not Kregen.

  The petty formalities of the duel wended through their paces: the apology was asked for and refused, we took up our positions, the signal was given, we walked, turned, fired. Two flat smacks of evil hatred in the cool morning air. Two puffs of smoke. He hit me in the right shoulder, high. I shot the kleesh clean through the guts.

  Turmoil followed and the doctor scurried. The seconds tried to hurry me away, but I had been keyed up. I acted as I might have acted on Kregen and not on Earth. I walked over to the lordling as he lay writhing, screaming in pain, choking. I bent over him. His second tried to drag me away and I pushed him and he staggered and fell. The doctor wadded a handful of white cloth that turned red in an instant. The lecher would most like
ly die. I did not think Earthly medical science at that time could save him.

  I bent over him and he glared up at me, choking, screaming.

  "You are going to die, you bastard," I said, quite calmly. "In your agony, think. Think if your pain was worth what you did to Mary Benton."

  I did not spit in his face. I remembered I was on Earth and, anyway, that would give him greater importance than the rast deserved.

  My second said in his gruff army way; "My God, Prescot! You’re a devil!" And then, brushing his stiff mustache, "You won’t be able to go back to England now."

  "There will be other things to do. Thank you for your assistance."

  We parted then, and I suppose he is buried somewhere on Earth, his gravestone moldering away over a corrupting coffin. Time has no mercy.

  So it happened that, waiting for the summons of the Scorpion, I was in France for the pathetic business of the Franco-Prussian War, a most unhappy affair. I admired the brisk efficiency of the German Army and felt great sorrow for the shambles that overtook the French Army. I’d fought them at Waterloo, and fought with them in the Crimea, and I’d fought with the Germans in that old war and was to fight against them unhappily in wars to come. The nonsense of national identities when they destroy happiness had been laid plainly open to me in the disputes between Vallia and Pandahem and between Vallia and Hamal. I was learning all the time.

  Although I now have a much clearer idea of what must have gone on in the three years between Zena Iztar’s visit and the day I found myself helping in a bloody hospital in Paris as the guns thundered about our ears, I will refrain from a guess, for that would destroy the appreciation of many of my actions. Hindsight can destroy logic and truth. I am making the attempt, painful though it is, to be as truthful as I can possibly be in this record. If that record makes me out to be the prize fool I am, then I stand guilty of being an onker.

  A balloon had just been inflated and sent off and the Prussians were firing at it. I stood a little apart, my hands and arms smothered in blood, looking. I looked up. The blueness stole in, or so it seemed to me, on the clouds of gun smoke. The noise of the cannon and rifles blended away and away and I was falling — heavenly, wonderful, superb, sublime! — falling, and the Scorpion enfolded me in its arms and bore me away. Never did man more thankfully quit this Earth.

  Chapter Six

  Of slings and knives

  Twenty-one years!

  Twenty-one whole terrestrial years had now passed since I had set foot on Kregen. What might have happened in that long span of time? I admit to a tremulous feeling as I stood up and looked around, wonderfully conscious of the streaming mingled radiance of Zim and Genodras falling all about me and lighting up with glory all my new hopes for the future. I felt weak, like a newly born ponsho. I felt lightheaded. My heart wanted to burst from my breast. I stamped my naked foot on the ground, on the short tufted grass, and deeply breathed in that indescribably bracing air of Kregen, air like wine, air that no man of Earth can possibly imagine. I was home!

  And yet Kregen is a large world with a greater landmass than Earth. Home, for me, was Valka or Zenicce or Djanduin. I might be anywhere. I didn’t give a damn where I was. Just so that I trod once more the same earth as my Delia, that when I had cleared up whatever mischief lay to my hand I could fly or sail or ride — walk or crawl — back to my Delia, that was all I craved. I would return to my Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond.

  Many and many a time have I returned to Kregen, and few times ever created in me more sheer joyful feelings of thankfulness as that occasion. I had thought myself abandoned and cast off. Now I was back.

  These thoughts sped through my mind with the speed of a Lohvian longbow shaft. As I stood up the reason for my arrival and the problem confronting me revealed itself plainly and, as always, unpleasantly.

  Naked as usual — for it had been a unique exception when the Star Lords had taken me back to Vilasca for the second time and given me my weapons — I would have to be the same old hasty, reckless, intemperate Dray Prescot. Maybe the Star Lords had gone down in my estimation for having provided me with weapons. I do not know.

  A flung stone whistled past my ear.

  The slinger, a small and agile fellow almost as naked as I was, had come springing out of the thick-leaved bushes. The sounds of combat beyond him told me where the action lay; those sounds combined in the light of Antares with the scream of frightened people and the shrill, shocking yells of vicious killers. I started toward the slinger.

  He was apim. The next stone missed also, but only because I dodged sideways. This fellow might be one of the people I had been sent here to assist; he might be one of those I must fight. I did not know. This problem confronted me as of old, the difference on this occasion being that I had no guidelines at all. A second man now followed the first, swirling a sling about his head. His stone barely missed the first slinger, who turned, reloaded and swung. By the time I had reached him he had sent his missile full into his pursuer’s face. The second man pitched to the ground, minus an eye and with blood flowing.

  I grabbed the slinger as he swung back. I had run noiselessly and his face contorted with terror, shattered at thus being taken without warning.

  "Now, dom," I said. "You can tell me all about it."

  "The slavers!" he cried, wincing from my grip, trying to kick me, trying to bite, struggling to get his knife out. He wore a breechclout of decent fawn cloth, with a bag for his slingshots, a leather belt, the knife and dusty sandals.

  "Slavers," I said.

  "They are taking away the girls! I must save them, and yet . . ." Here he stopped struggling. He was very young. His voice fell. "And yet I ran away."

  "Then we must run back and see what we can do."

  If the Star Lords looked down on this comedy and were displeased with what they saw, I might find myself back on Earth for another twenty-one years. Even as I took a grip on the lad’s arm and ran him back to the bushes, I considered that from what had happened to me on Earth it could well be that the Star Lords had had no hand in this return to Kregen. It could be the Savanti who had called on me. We ran into the bushes.

  At my back the ground trended dustily away to mountains with no sign of human habitation. Beyond the bushes lay a well-trodden path. Further bushes and then a few scattered cultivated fields extended ahead. A house burned. Well, as I have said, sounds of strife and sights of burning houses are often my lot when I return to Kregen.

  Along the path the girls in their fetters struggled, shrieking and wailing, terrified. The difficulty was in judging who was attempting to abduct the girls and who was trying to rescue them. At first glance there seemed very little difference between the two sides. Both wore the fawn-colored breechclouts, both used slings and knives. They were all apims, with a mixture of hair ranging from light to dark brown, so I must discard that as an identification. A stone almost took my eye out, and I moved away smartly, marking the man who had flung.

  "Him," I said to my captive. "Is he friend or enemy?"

  "That is Noki and he was always an onker! He couldn’t hit the mark at twenty paces!"

  A trifle local friction here, I decided. Noki saw what was going on and tried again, whereat my captive bellowed, "Hold, you get-onker! This man will help us!"

  "I thought you were slain, Mako!" yelped this Noki. "Hurry! They are dragging the girls to their ship."

  I perked up at this. So far this appeared to me to be a parody of the times I had fought for the Star Lords. The time was slipping away, for already most of the girls had vanished around a bend in the trail. They were all shackled to one another, stumbling on. While it was clear enough to see which of the men were trying to release them, it was not as easy to see who was slinging at the locals and bringing them down.

  I made up my mind.

  "Follow, Mako and you, Noki! You must fight!"

  Then I was off, haring along the trail, dodging flung stones until, passing the struggling, s
hrieking girls, I reached the head of the column around the bend. The sea blazed before me, rippled with a breeze, glittering with the twin fires of the Suns of Scorpio. A large open pulling boat was drawn up on the sand. There was going to be no mistake now.

  I went straight in at the three fellows hauling on the shackles at the head of the procession, dragging the girls along. They all dropped the ropes and slung at me. I dodged. Three blows took care of them. Against knives a fist is a useful weapon, lacking anything better. The unarmed combat disciplines hammered into me by the Krozairs of Zy also ensured I could take out a man armed only with a knife. As for the slung stones, they could break an arm or crack a skull. Two more slavers went down, their faces abruptly bloody, as they tried to jump me. And all the time I was leaping around like a frenzied fire-dancer, trying to present so shifting and erratic a target that the slingers would be bound to miss.

  It all struck me as remarkably fatuous, not real, as though I was being run through a slow-motion reprise of what had gone on long ago in much more gory detail. But the truth was there in the blood and the screams and the agony. This was real enough. The missing factor was twenty-one years away from scenes of Kregen, I was the one at fault.

  What I had left, only moments before, still seemed more real to me. The Parisian hospital, the Prussian guns, the balloon, the blood there. Already, because one of the slavers twisted his knife as I struck him down and spitted himself, I had blood on my hands. Blood. Is blood, then, so inseparable from life?

  "They climb into the boat!" screeched Mako.

  "Don’t just stand there shouting about it!" I bellowed at him, running down the beach. "Stop them!" I did not have the heart to use the great word Jikai, and I think I was right.

  An older man ran across as I started. A knife slash had brought blood in a line across his side. He was panting. "Let them go," he said, his chest heaving. "They may kill more of us."

  I ignored him. His was the word of wisdom, of course, for the girls had been saved and the last of the slavers were evidently only too anxious to push off and row away. But I had other ideas. It was through no bloodthirsty madness that I acted as I did; I simply needed that boat. I did not know where I was but, by Vox, it was a long way off the beaten track.