The Stolen Future Box Set Page 10

  He was trembling now, his eyes darting between my eyes and my Webley. A man of the kind I knew would have begun to sweat, his forehead would be moist and glistening, but Farren’s was neither. Perhaps Nuum did not sweat. I had no doubt, however, that they would bleed. Still not speaking, my aim shifted to his left knee.

  “All right! All right!” He fairly screamed, like a woman. “I—”

  And in that moment, when I had unconsciously relaxed my guard, thinking the battle won, he jumped wildly to the side and disappeared into the foliage. Cursing, I fired wildly, but the bullet itself disappeared and I do not know what I hit. I plunged after him, entering the plants at the same spot, hardly surprised by now to find that there were no plants at all, but merely an illusion hiding another twisting path. Farren was nowhere to be seen, but I did not need to guess where he had gone. In seconds, this entire floor would be flooded with armed guards.

  A hand abruptly appeared out of nowhere at my side, seizing my arm and pulling at me. When I resisted, a voice hissed:

  “Come with me if you want to live!”

  What choice did I have? I found myself in a small area half-filled with gardening implements—items I recognized because their basic utility had never changed. Evidently some of the plants in Farren’s garden were real, and here was where his gardeners kept their tools. And where, it appeared, his gardeners spied on him.

  My rescuer put a finger to his lips, another sign that had not changed at all.

  “If you don’t know where the door is,” he whispered, “it is almost impossible to find.”

  The area outside exploded with noise, men—many men—bursting into the apartment, spreading out in a search pattern, looking for me. I heard them shouting instructions, suggestions, and finally questions as I was not run to ground. Farren’s voice I did not hear.

  While we stood unmoving and silent, I had a chance to appraise the Thoran who had saved me. Typical of his race, he stood only to my shoulder, dark-haired, elfin of features. His smock was irregularly smudged with dirt, a rarity in this world where dirt seemed as conquered as air travel or telepathy.

  He was the first Thoran whom I had had an extended opportunity to study, other than Bantos Han and his family. Heretofore I had assumed that the similarities between them were simply familial, and where observed elsewhere, I did not ascribe a great deal of importance to them because I was trying not to stare, but without such a prolonged study, deductions become difficult.

  Here, however, was a completely different person from my friends, different of background and breeding, perhaps different of racial origin, and yet he appeared in most respects quite similar to them; his skin, for example, was the same dark milky color, as though all of the races of Man had long ago coalesced into one. I confess that even I, who had grown up in America and felt no greater racial antipathy toward others than did my neighbor, found the idea of such melding a trifle unsettling. Lost I might be in a far-advanced era, but I was still a man trapped in my own time. I was glad that my unique brain physiology allowed me to keep such thoughts entirely to myself.

  At length, the sounds of the search died away, but even then neither my rescuer nor I moved to leave our hiding place. By this I appreciated that he was no fool, and I fancy that he understood the same of me. In such a necessarily brief and uncommunicative friendship as ours was to be, this kind of unspoken bond is the most to which one can aspire.

  “I think they’re gone,” he whispered at last. “Let me go first.”

  “If they see you, they will know that you were here all along,” I objected. “I won’t stay hidden if they arrest you.”

  “If anyone sees me, I will stall as long as I can. You can either come to my rescue or try to escape, whichever seems best. But you can’t be caught.”

  He turned to leave but I took his arm. Gentle as my grasp was, I doubted he could easily break it.

  “What do you mean? Who are you? How did you know I was here?”

  He shook his head. “Names are dangerous—but Bantos Han sent word you would be here. You’re a ghost; you’re more valuable to Thora than I am—than any of us.”

  “What are you talking about? I came here to find Hana Wen, that’s all. No matter what Farren thinks, I’m not an assassin.”

  He looked me straight in the eye. “You’re a soldier, I know that much. You could help. You can go places where we can’t, carry machines that we aren’t allowed to own. You can help us take back Thora.”

  I thought back on Bantos Han now with greater clarity, and respect. What a weapon he must have thought he had found in me—and yet he was willing to give it all up to allow my quixotic adventure, rather than deny me my freedom. Or was it the life of his sister-in-law he held above all else? I doubted I would ever know, since I was unlikely to see him again. But my own path, dictated by my heart and my own sense of duty, was unchanged.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t. I came here to find Hana Wen, and I’m going to.” His disappointment was evident on his face and in his thoughts. “Look,” I continued on impulse, pulling out the Webley. “I can’t carry this around anymore; they’ll be looking for it. But if you can smuggle it out of here…”

  His despair evaporated in an instant. He had witnessed, in some sense, the entire exchange between Farren and me; he knew what my Webley could do, and how it could operate where more sophisticated machinery was useless. I quickly showed him how to use it, paying special attention to the importance of never pointing even an “unloaded” gun at anyone you did not plan to shoot. He accepted the gift with alacrity.

  “This is wonderful,” he said as he hid it among his tools. “Now we can both be shot on sight.” I must not have appreciated his wry humor, because when he spoke again it was with utter earnestness. “Look, Farren’s probably gone back to Dure. That’s where his family is. It’s thousands of miles away. We can use you here. You don’t even have any way of getting there.”

  “Leave that to me.” Assuming I can get out of here, of course…

  Chapter 14

  I See War

  There was no sound in the cabin, no rush of air or roaring engines, nothing but the steady soft rasp of my own breath. Common soldiers didn’t merit outside berths with breathtaking views of the tops of the clouds, and as my bunkmate Harros had joked right before he went off to mess, if you climbed to the observation deck at this speed the wind would sweep you straight off the ship.

  I had begged off from breakfast, citing my injuries, although they were just memories now, and even the scars were fading fast. But Harros hadn’t argued; I think he was put off by my manner. I am normally much more gregarious with my fellows-in-arms, but under the present circumstances I thought battlefield friendships both unnecessary and ill-advised.

  Especially since I was not at all sure which side I wanted to fight for.

  How had I come to be here? To put it succinctly, I had been shanghaied. This worked in my favor; I was able to put on a show of total ignorance of where I was going, and why, without rousing any suspicion. Even the fact that no one knew me had so far not posed a problem.

  Escaping Farren’s palace had proven far easier than I could have hoped; his security, to give it perhaps a better name than it deserved, was unused to actually needing to do more than stand and look mildly menacing. As with so much of their culture, the Nuum had placed too much confidence in their machines to have any experience in the real-life tracking of men.

  How ironic, then, that such was my own goal, to track Farren down wherever he might run and wrest from him that which I desired with my heart, and which he desired with only the basest animal emotions: Hana Wen. Whence he would fly, I knew not, but the answer would likely be found in the midst of his fellows.

  With that end in mind, I marched boldly into the aliens’ headquarters, planning to elicit advice from the Library. Hardly had I stopped before the elevator than two Nuum pulled up even with me, seized me by the arms, and whisked me away.

  At first I thought I had been
arrested, but in the space of the few words they vouchsafed me, they made it clear that they thought I was merely one of their own, whose blind obedience and cooperation were expected. I immediately discarded any impulse to break free, although I am certain I could have done so with ease. Although their bulk was nearly the equal of my own, their muscles seemed less developed, as if generations of allowing mechanicals to do their heavy work had softened them.

  They ushered me back to the hangar whence I had first entered the building days before, loosening their grip when it became obvious I was not going to resist. Docked there was what I could only presume was a large airship. It was a silvery white oval, not unlike a large zeppelin, but without any gondola that I could see. I was marched up a gangplank to an officer holding an electronic clipboard who presided at a hatchway at the top. After a few words with my escort the officer waved me inside.

  “Hey, wait a minute!”

  I stopped and turned slowly, still in the hatchway. “Yes, sir?”

  He spent a very long moment staring me up and down.

  “What’s your name?”

  As much as I had been expecting this, it was still hard to form the words.

  “Uh, Keryl Clee, sir.”

  Again he studied me closely, his eyes narrowing.

  “Good to have you aboard. We’re going to need men like you.” He made an entry on his clipboard, and waved me inside, where more officers stood to direct me to my bunk assignment.

  I tried not to stare, but the few open doors I passed were full of banks of machinery whose blinking lights and buttons that were very nearly frightening to a boy barely out of the dusty Southwest. Electricity was still very new where I grew up, and Bantos Han’s house had featured few machines of any kind, or at least any that I could recognize as such. Knowing that this was a war vessel and that some of those lights and panels probably represented weapons beyond my comprehension did nothing to soothe my nerves.

  One—and not the least—of the evils of trench warfare had been the hours of waiting until your orders came up from the rear echelons, knowing that when the waiting ended the dying and the killing began. As I sat on my bunk in the belly of a war machine the likes of which I could not have imagined a few weeks ago, I felt that same anxiety—except that this time I didn’t have any chums to help pass the time away in song, or family reminiscences, or just plain companionable silence. I was alone, and only one person could make that any better.

  Finally overcoming my own self-pity, I got off my meager bunk and wandered off to find food. The mess room hit me like a sharp, cold wave at the beach. All of my previous experience with the Nuum had shown me an efficient, aloof people in a cold, streamlined environment. I had dismissed Harros’ attempts at camaraderie as an aberration, only what was expected of civilized men trying to make the most of uncivilized conditions. One minute in the mess hall plainly revealed that this time the uncivilized lout had been me.

  Only three-quarters full, the room could not have held more noise. Arching over all was the music—at least I think it was music. To me it was loud, chaotic, and discordant, but from the number of tables rocking back and forth under the timely pounding of Nuum fists, to them it was prime entertainment. I resisted the urge to put my hands over my ears with some effort and found an empty seat as far from the others as I could. I was still being unsociable, but at least I was being unsociable in a crowd. And I was still an alien among aliens—I wasn’t even sure I knew how to order a meal.

  Suddenly I realized that I was famished. When had I last eaten? I couldn’t remember for the life of me—unless it was in the Library, and I didn’t know just how far the food provided by the Librarian might satisfy me. Without a thought I swept my hand over the table, and a menu glowed to life beneath the surface. The Librarian had plainly taken wide latitude with the knowledge he had implanted: The operation of the food service machines seemed to flow straight from my fingers with no direction from my brain. My facility was that of any Nuum born and bred, nor did my familiarity stop there. I had never seen a single one of the menu items before, yet I made my selections with alacrity and confidence. While I waited, I took in the room again.

  No eyes at all were directed toward me; no one had heard me walk in over the noise. The music stopped abruptly—I breathed a sigh of relief—only to crash back as twice as loudly and incomprehensibly as before. This time I couldn’t help putting my hands over my ears.

  “Loud enough for you?”

  I jerked my head up. I had heard the question as clearly as if the music hadn’t been driving straight through me. For an instant, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, I thought it must have stopped—then I remembered the magic of telepathy and its independence of my ears.

  Harros stood across from me, a tray of food in his hand and an inquiring look on his face. I nodded and he sat down.

  “Sorry if I startled you,” he said in my mind. It was an odd feeling, this communication through telepathy alone, but it seemed to block out normal hearing, and soothed the headache I was getting from the music. “I didn’t realize you had come in here because it would help you concentrate.”

  He had a smile on his face, and he conveyed it with his thoughts, so I grinned back. With the music softened, it seemed easier to smile. Harros’ timeless offer of friendship had helped me delude myself into believing for the moment that we were merely two more soldiers fighting a war we pretended to understand.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I really came in here for the company. I just wasn’t prepared for the music.”

  “First time, eh?”

  “Hm?”

  “First time on a fighting ship?”

  “Yes.” At least on a flying one. “How did you know?”

  “Easy. You hate the music.” He grinned. “This is all they play. After a while you get used to it. What did you do before?”

  I hazarded a guess. “I was in the library section.”

  “You?” His eyebrows shot up. “You sure don’t look like a librarian. How’d you land a job like that?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  He leaned back in his chair and laughed, the sound lost in the music. It didn’t come through his thoughts at all. I just kept grinning like an idiot. I had no idea why he thought it was so funny.

  And then the music halted again, abruptly as before, but this time it didn’t start back up. Harros’ laugh came out full force, odd like a sound that is cut off in reverse. He brought himself under control with an effort and swiveled in his chair.

  I expected an officer to address us, but in the air over our heads in the center of the room an image began to take form. It was a map of a hilly plot of land that I didn’t recognize. The accompanying voice emanated from no particular direction.

  “You are viewing a map of the black sector. The Thorans have taken advantage of the local topography to mount an unusually strong terrorist offensive.” In the next sentence I thought the voice deviated noticeably from its even pedantic tone. “The blacks have been unable to contain the problem.”

  The image glided to a ground-level view of a rolling jungle crisscrossed with what had looked from the air like roads.

  “The local eco-system is highly fragile and highly valuable, which prevents our using our heaviest firepower, a fact that the rebels have used to their own advantage. Witness.”

  The next scene was reminiscent of a motion picture battle scene, save that the pictures were in color, and far more vivid than anything I had ever seen in the cinema back home. Our point of view started at ground level, then rose straight up like a man coming to his feet. It was only when our vantage point moved forward that I realized it was a man, evidently carrying a camera—although where he held it I could not fathom, since at intervals either of his hands might be seen.

  Something bothered me about his hands, and distracted me from the action. I tried to concentrate, but at the moment the camera was simply moving through tall grasses toward a line of overwhelming trees. We
could see helmeted men to either side carrying what appeared be staffs of some sort, and hear the swishing of many legs cutting through the rushes, but no one spoke, and there was little to keep my attention. What was it…?

  Of course! The voice had spoken of “the blacks” being unable to handle their own problems with the rebels. I had assumed that the Nuum to whose aid we were speeding were dark-skinned…but the hands in the picture were white. I breathed a sigh of inward relief that I could dispose of my irrelevant concerns—obviously the man carrying the camera must be an officer, a white man commanding a Negro company. It was comforting in a way to see that some of Nature’s orders remained the same no matter how else Man might change.

  Like so many other cherished illusions of my existence, this would soon be shattered by a truth far more astonishing than any I could imagine.

  I jerked my head back to the screen as a flash of light scored across it. The camera began to zig-zag back and forth. Occasionally a small explosion would burst off to the side or in front of us, return fire as I supposed, but there were few of those, and as we approached the trees the firing from our side halted altogether.

  But it was not until at last the camera burst through the grasses onto a seared strip of land, and a line of men rose up to meet us in hand-to-hand combat as if Jason himself had sown them from dragon’s teeth, that I realized how cruelly correct my observations of humanity had been. Those were not roads I had seen earlier. And this was not war with buttons and levers and death rays from the sky.

  This was trench warfare. And I was headed straight for it.

  Chapter 15

  I See Battle

  The mess room briefing was only a short overview of the problem; after a few minutes of watching the kind of warfare any intelligent species would have banned millennia past, we were ordered back to our bunks for what turned out to be some kind of sleep learning, similar in process to what the Librarian had done for me.