Big Planet

14 Treachery

It was still too early for sleep. The traders sat by the fire, busy with a game involving a rotating cage full of colored insects. Nancy sat cross-legged, her dark-fringed eyes wide, the pupils big and black. Pianza sat on a log, paring his fingernails; Bishop was frowning over a small notebook. Corbus leaned back against a tree, his spare body relaxed, his eyes alert, watchful. Clodleberg greased the bearings of the trolleys, humming through his teeth.

Glystra walked down to the shore, to watch evening settle over the lake. Immense quiet enveloped the world, and the faint sounds from the camp only pointed up the stillness. The west was orange, green and gray; the east was washed in tenderest mauve. The wind had died completely. The lake lay flat, with a surface rich as milk.

Glystra picked up a pebble, turned it over in his fingers. “Round pebble, quartz—piece of Big Planet, washed by Big Planet water, the water of Lake Pellitante, polished by the sands of the Big Planet shore…” He weighed it in his palm, half-minded to preserve it. All his life it would have the power to recreate for him this particular moment, when peace and solitude and strangeness surrounded him, with Big Planet night about to fall.

Nancy drifted down from among the trees, her hair a niist of pale gold. Thinking of the nights at Kirstendale Glystra felt a pang, a pressure in his throat.

She came close beside him. “Why did you come out here?”

“Just wandering… Thinking…”

“Are you sorry you left Kirstendale?”

He was surprised at the tone of wistful reproach. “No, of course not.”

“You have been avoiding me,” she said simply, looking at him with wide eyes.

Glystra had the uncomfortable feeling he was about to be put on the defensive. “No, not at all.”

“Perhaps you found the Kirstendale woman more desirable than me?” Again the tone of sad accusation.

Glystra laughed. “I hardly spoke to her… How did you find the Kirstendale man?”

She came close to him. “How could I think of anyone other than you? My mind was full of jealousy…”

The weight lifted from Glystra’s mind, the pressure eased from his throat… High from the sky came the deep note of a bell, a sonorous vibrating chime. Glystra looked up in astonishment. “What on earth is that?”

“Some kind of night-creature, I suppose.”

The note throbbed once more across the lake, and Glystra thought to see a dark shadow sweeping quietly past.

He settled upon a log, pulled her down beside him. “After Myrtlesee there’s no more monoline.”

“No.”

“I’ve been considering going back to Kirstendale—”

He felt her stiffen, turn her head.

“—and there build a sail-plane large enough to carry all of us. And then I remember that we can’t stay aloft indefinitely; that without proper power to keep us going we might as well stay on the ground… And then I consider fantastic notions: rockets, kites—”

She caressed his face. “You worry too much, Claude.”

“One scheme might work—a balloon. A hot-air balloon. Unfortunately the trend of the. wind is south-east, and we would very soon be blown out to sea.” He heaved a deep sigh.

Nancy pulled him to his feet. “Let’s walk up the shore, where we’re farther away from the camp”

When they returned, the traders had brought out a big green bottle of wine, and all were sitting around the fire, flushed and talkative. Glystra and Nancy each drank a small quantity, and presently the fire tumbled into coals and the night air pinched at their bones.

Sentry watches were arranged, and the party turned into their blankets. Sleep, under the great trees by Lake Pellitante…

Brilliant sunlight flooded the camp. Glystra struggled awake. Why did his mouth taste so vilely? Why had not the last sentry aroused him?

He stared around the camp.

The traders were gone!

Glystra jumped to his feet. Under the monoline lay Pianza, face down—and his neck was ghastly with blood.

The trolleys were gone. Four trolleys, a hundred pounds of metal, clothes, tools…

And Pianza dead…

They buried him in a shallow grave in utter silence. Glystra looked up and down the monoline, turned back to his company.

“There’s no use fooling ourselves. This is a real blow.”

Clodleberg said sheepishly, “The wine—we should never have drunk the wine. They rubbed the inside of our glasses with sleep oil. One should never trust traders.”

Glystra shook his head glumly, looked toward Pianza’s grave. No more Pianza. It was a real loss. A fine fellow, kind, unassuming, cooperative. A wife and three children awaited his return to Earth, but now they would never see him again. The Earth calcium of his bones would settle into the Big Planet soil… He returned back to the silent group.

“Clodleberg, there’s no reason for you to come any further. The trolleys are gone, our metal is gone. There’s nothing for you ahead. You’d best get back to Kirstendale and pick up Cloyville’s trolley, and that should get you back to Swamp City.”

There would be Corbus, Bishop, Nancy and himself left in the party. “Any of you others can do likewise. There’s hardship and death ahead of us. Anyone who wants to return to Kirstendale—my good wishes go with him.”

Nancy said, “Why won’t you turn back, Claude? There’ll be all our life ahead of us—sooner or later we can get a message to the Enclave.”

“No. I’m going on.”

“I’ll stick,” said Bishop.

“I don’t like Kirstendale,” said Corbus. “They work too hard.”

Nancy’s shoulders drooped.

“You can go back with Clodleberg,” suggested Glystra.

She looked up at him sorrowfully. “Do you want me to?”

“I never wanted you to come in the first place.”

She tossed her head. “I’m not going back now.”

Clodleberg rose to his feet, twisted his blond mustache. He bowed politely. “I wish you all the best of luck. You’d be wiser to return to Swamp City with me. Wittelhatch is not the worst master in the world.” He looked from face to face. “No?”

“No.”

“May you reach your destination.”

Glystra watched him as he walked through the trees. His arms swung free. He had left his cross-bow on the trolley; the trolley was gone.

“Just a minute,” called Glystra.

Clodleberg turned inquiringly. Glystra gave him the heat-gun. “This should see you past the Stanezi. Throw off the safety here, press this button. There’s very little power left in the bank, don’t fire it unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“Thank you,” said Clodleberg. “Thank you very much.”

“Goodbye.”

They watched him disappear through the trees.

Glystra sighed. “The two or three charges in that gun might have taken us a few extra miles, or killed a few more Rebbirs. It’ll save his life… Well, let’s take an inventory. What’s left to us?”

“The commissary packs, with the concentrated foods, my vitamins, our blankets, the water-maker and four ion-shines,” said Bishop. “Not very much.”

“Makes for easier walking,” said Corbus. “Let’s get moving. We’ll go crazy standing around here moping.”

“Good enough,” said Glystra. “Let’s start.”

The lake was forty miles wide—two days march under the quiet trees. On the evening of the second day a river out-flowing from the lake behind the south barred the way, and camp was made on the shore.

Next morning a raft was contrived by cross-piling dead branches. By dint of furious poling and paddling the clumsy construction was forced to the opposite bank, three miles downstream from the monoline.

Climbing up on the bank they looked across the landscape. Looming in the north-east were the crags of the Eyrie, guarded by a wall of great cliffs running north to south.

“Looks like about another three days to the cliffs,” said Bishop, “and no perceptible gap for the monoline.”

“Perhaps it’s just as well we’re on foot,” said Corbus. “Imagine the portage to the top of the cliff!”

Glystra turned his head, looked along the river bank toward the lake, looked again, squinted. He pointed. “What do you see up there?”

“About a dozen men on zipangotes,” said Corbus.

“The traders spoke of a party of Rebbirs… Conceivably—” he nodded.

Nancy sighed. “How nice to ride on one of those beasts instead of walking!”

“The same thought had occurred to me,” said Glystra.

Bishop said dolefully, “Three months ago I was a civilized human being, never thought I’d turn out a horse-thief.”

Glystra grinned. “Makes it less astonishing when you remember that five or six hundred years ago the Rebbirs were civilized Earthmen.”

“Well,” said Corbus, “what do we do? Walk down and murder them?”

“If they’ll wait for us,” said Glystra. “I hope we can do it on less than a macro-watt, because—” he scrutinized the indicator of the ion-shine he had claimed from Pianza’s body “—there’s only two macro-watts left in the bank.”

“About the same here,” said Bishop.

“I’ve got about two good kicks in mine,” said Corbus.

“If they ride off peaceably,” said Glystra, “we’ll know they’re good citizens and their lives won’t be on our consciences. But if—”

“They’ve seen us!” cried Nancy. “They’re coming!”

It was a race across the stretch of gray plain—men in flapping black cloaks crouched on the thundering zipan-gotes. These were a species different from the string of beasts they had sold to Wittelhatch; they were larger, heavier, and their heads were bony and white, like skulls.

“Demons!” muttered Nancy under her breath.

The men wore tight helmets of a white shiny substance, ridged over the tip and trailing scarlet plumes behind. Crouched low, knees clamped into the horny black sides of their skull-headed chargers, the foremost flourished swords of gleaming metal.

“Up here, up on the bank,” said Glystra. “We want to delay the front ones till they’re all within range…”

The horny feet thudded furiously across the plain, the Rebbirs sang out calls of the wildest exultation. The faces of the foremost were clear: bony aquiline visages, jut-nosed, the lips drawn back in strain.

“I count thirteen,” said Glystra. “Bishop take four on the left; Corbus four on the right; I’ll get five from the middle.”

The riders deployed in a near-perfect line in front of the outcrop where the four stood, as if they had lined up to be killed. Three flickers of violet, a crackling of power. Thirteen Rebbirs lay blasted and smouldering on the ground.

A few minutes later they set off across the plain toward the line of cliffs. They rode the four strongest zipangotes; the others had been set free. The Rebbir swords, knives and metal were secure behind their saddles. They wore black cloaks and white helmets.

Nancy found little pleasure in the disguise. “The Rebbirs smell like goats.” She made a wry face. “This cloak is abominable. And the helmet is greasy inside.”

“Wipe it out,” advised Glystra. “If it gets us to Myrtlesee, it’s served its purpose…”

The land, rising in a long slope, became rocky and barren. The flat-leaved vines and creepers near the lake gave way to stunted thorns of a particularly ugly orange color. The tides of sunlight glared and dazzled, and snow on the Eyrie glittered like white fire.

The region was not without inhabitants. From time to time Glystra, glancing to the side, found white eyes in a pink wizened face staring into his from out of the thorn, and occasionally he saw them running, crouched low, bounding over the rocks.

On the morning of the second day a caravan of six freight-carriers appeared in the distance ahead, sailing swiftly down the wind. From a covert fifty yards off the trail the four travellers watched the caravan whirl past— six swift shapes swinging to the press of white cloth— then they were gone downwind, and soon out of sight toward Lake Pellitante.

On the third day, the escarpment loomed big ahead. The monoline rose in a tremendous swoop, up toward the lip of the cliff.

“That’s the way you come down from Myrtlesee,” said Glystra. He turned his head, followed the hang of the cable across the sky, up, up, and along, till it disappeared against the chalky front of the cliff. “Going up wouldn’t be so easy. That’s a long portage. But down… Remember the ride down into the Galatudanian Valley?”

Nancy shivered. “This would be worse…”

They came to the landing at the end of the monoline, where the portage must start. The trail led off to the left, slanting up over the basal detritus of crumbled boulders. Then it cut back, into a way dug out of the very side of the cliff and curbed with cemented masonry. Two hundred yards in one direction, then back, traversing— right, left, right, left—and the shoulders of the zipangotes rubbed the inner wall, so that it was necessary to sit with the inside leg looped over the pommel of the saddle. The zipangotes swept up the trail easily, gliding on six legs with no suggestion of effort.

Up, up, back, forth. The face of Big Planet dropped below, spreading wider and wider, and where an Earthly eye might expect a horizon, with a division into land and sky, there was only land, and then still more land. Lake Pellitante glanced and gleamed in the distance. A feeder river came down from the north, circling out of the Eyrie, and stained the earth yellow with its swamps. The outlet river, which they had crossed on rafts, swept broadly south-east, presently breaking into a series of exaggerated meanders, like a crumpled silver ribbon, and then vanished into the south.

Up, up. Wind drove a scud of clouds at the cliff; suddenly the trail was cloaked in damp gray twilight, and the wind swept up the mountain with the sound of a roaring torrent.

The fog glowed yellow, dispersed in trails and wisps; the sun shone full on their backs. Glystra’s beast shoved its horny face over the last hump, surged with its four hind feet, and stood on flat ground.

They halted near the edge of the cliff, with the wind pressing up over the rim. The plateau was bare limestone, scoured and free of dust. Gray-white, featureless, it stretched twenty miles flat as a sheet of cardboard; then became mottled, a region of gray shadows. The intervening area was empty except for the monoline: the standards at fifty-foot intervals and the cable dwindling to nothing like an exercise in perspective.

“Well,” said Glystra, “nothing in sight, so—”

“Look,” said Corbus in a flat voice. He pointed north, along the rim of the cliff.

Glystra slumped back into the saddle. “Rebbirs.”

They came along the verge like a column of ants, still several miles distant. Glystra estimated their number at two hundred. In a thick voice he said, “We’d better get moving… We can’t kill them all. If we ride along the monoline—not too fast—perhaps they won’t bother us”

“Let’s go!” said Corbus.

At a careless lope the caravan started east, down the copy-book perspective of the monoline. Glystra kept an anxious watch on the company to the north. “They don’t seem to be following—”

“They’re coming now,” said Corbus.

A dozen of the cavalry spurted forward out of the ranks, raced out at a slant evidently bent on interception.

Glystra clenched his teeth. “We’ve got to run for it.”

He dug his knees into the side of the zipangote. It moaned and mumbled and flung itself ahead, bony face straining against the wind.

Twenty-four heavy feet pounded back the limestone. And behind came the Rebbirs, black cloaks flapping out behind.