Destiny Doll

FIFTEEN

Hoot stumbled on the centaurs the second day out.

We still were in the badlands. Heretofore any of them we had come to had been crossed in a few hours or a day at most. But this badlands area seemed to stretch on forever and we all looked forward to the end of it, if the end should ever come. Loaded down with heavy packs as Tuck and I were, it was rugged going, mostly up and down, with only short respites when the trail ran for short distances across more level land.

Hoot kept out ahead of us. We saw him only now and then and then only glimpses of him when he stood on some high point to look back and see how we were doing.

Shortly before noon I saw him sidewheeling rapidly down the trail above us. Glad of an excuse to rest, I dropped my pack and waited for him. So did Sara, but Tuck merely stopped when we stopped and did not drop his pack. He stood there, hunched over under the weight of it, staring at the ground. Since we’d left the camp where we had lost the hobbies, he had been more withdrawn than ever, fumbling along without paying attention to anything at all.

Hoot came slithering down the trail and stopped in front of us.

“Hobbies ahead,” he hooted at me. “Ten times ten of them. But without their rockers and with faces such as you.”

“Centaurs,” Sara said.

“Playing,” panted Hoot. “In depression in the hills. Playing at game. Knocking sphere about with sticks.”

“Centaurs playing polo,” Sara said, enchanted. “What could be more appropriate!”

She reached up to brush the truant lock of hair out of her eyes and watching her, I caught a glimpse again of the girl who had met me in the hallway of that old house back on Earth-as she had looked before the dust and wear of travel on this planet had blunted the sharp edge of her beauty.

“Understand do I,” said Hoot, “that you seek for them. Glad I be to find them.”

“Thank you, Hoot,” said Sara.

I reached down and picked up my pack and shrugged into the harness.

“Lead on, Hoot,” I said.

“Do you think,” asked Sara, “that the centaurs still might have the brain case? They might have lost it or broken it or used it up some way.”

“We’ll know,” I said, “when we talk with them.”

“What about his memory?” she asked. “If we get the case and put it into him, will the memory still be there? Will he remember as well as when it was taken out of him?”

“The memory won’t be lost,” I assured her. “Everthing he ever knew will still be there. It’s the way a robotic brain is made. They don’t forget like people.”

There was a chance, of course, that there’d be more than one tribe of centaurs on the planet, that there might be many tribes of them, and that this one up ahead, engaged in their polo playing, would not be the tribe that had Roscoe’s brain case. But I didn’t mention this to her.

There was a chance as well they’d not be interested in parting with it. Although I couldn’t imagine what earthly good a robotic brain case would be to anyone unless they had a robot.

When we neared the top of the hill beyond the one down which Hoot had scrambled to bring us word, he whispered to us that the centaurs were just beyond the bill.

I’m not sure why we did it, for no one passed the word to do it, but we all scrooched down when we neared the top of the hill and peeked over it.

Below us lay a wide flat area of sand and scrawny vegetation and beyond that little area the red and yellow of the desert lay, with the badlands formations finally petering out.

Hoot had been wrong in his counting of them. There were many more than ten times ten. The bulk of them were ranged solidly around a rectangular playing field, which was a playing field only by the virtue of a game being played upon it. It was a level chunk of desert, with two rows of white stones serving as goals. Upon the field a dozen centaurs were involved in furious action, long clubs clutched in their hands, fighting for the possession of a ball, whacking it back and forth-a rude and very elemental version of the noble game of polo.

Even as we watched, however, the, game came to an end. The players trotted off the field and the crowd began breaking up.

Beyond the polo field a few tents were set up, although one should not have called them tents. They were simply large squares of some sort of dirty fabric supported by poles thrust into the ground, designed perhaps for nothing more than shelter from the sun. Here and there among the shelters were piles of packs, probably containing the few possessions of the tribe.

The centaurs were milling about, with no seeming purpose, exactly as a crowd of people on an aimless holiday would mill around.

“What do we do now?” asked Sara. “Just walk down to them?”

Tuck came out of his trance. “Not all of us,” he said. “Just one.”

“And I suppose that’s you,” I said, half-kidding.

“Of course it’s me,” said Tuck. “If anyone is going to get killed, I’m the candidate.”

“I don’t think,” said Sara, “that they’d just up and kill someone.”

“That’s what you think,” I said.

“Let’s look at it logically,” said Tuck, in that dirty supercilious way of his that made you want to belt him. “Of all of us, I am the least likely to get killed. I am a humble-looking person, very inoffensive and with no bluster in me and probably not appearing quite right in the head. And I have this brown robe and I don’t wear shoes, but sandals. . .”

“Those babies down there,” I told him, “don’t know a thing about brown robes or sandals. And they could care less if you were bright or stupid. If they feel like killing someone. . .”

“But you can’t know that,” said Sara. “They might be friendly people.”

“Do they look friendly to you?”

“No, I guess they don’t,” she said, “although you can’t tell just by looking at them. But Tuck may have something going for him. Maybe they don’t know about brown robes and sandals, but maybe they could sense a simple soul. They might see right off he isn’t dangerous but is filled with kindly thoughts.”

And I was thinking all the time she was saying this that she must have someone else in mind, for it couldn’t be our Tuck.

“I’m the one to go, by God,” I said. “So let’s just cut out this jabbering and I’ll go on down there. They’d mop up the place with Tuck.”

“I don’t suppose they would with you,” she said. “You’re damned right they wouldn’t. I know how to handle. . .”

“Captain,” said Tuck, “why don’t you ever listen to reason? You just go popping off. You got to be the big shot. Consider just two things. What I said I meant. They might not clobber me because I’m a different kind of man than you are. There wouldn’t be the satisfaction of taking off on me there’d be in taking off on you. There isn’t too much fun in killing or in beating up someone who is pitiful and weak and if I only put my mind to it, I can look awful pitiful and weak. And the other thing is this-you’re needed more than I am. If something happened to me it wouldn’t make much difference, but it would make a lot of difference to this expedition if you went down there and got yourself knocked off.”

I stared at him, aghast that he had had the guts to say what he’d just said. “You mean all this foolishness?” I asked.

“Of course I do,” ‘he said. “What did you think, that I was just grandstanding? Did you think I thought you wouldn’t let me go and no matter what I said, I wouldn’t have to go, that I would be safe?”

I didn’t answer him, but he was right. That was exactly what I’d thought.

“Whoever goes,” said Sara, “will have to ride Old Paint. The kind of things they are, they’d have more respect for you if you were riding Paint. And another thing, Paint could get you out of there if the situation started going bad.”

“Mike,” honked Hoot, “the holy one speaks vivid sort of sense.”

“It’s all damn foolishness,” I told them. “I’m the one who is supposed to take the risks. I’m being paid for it.”

“Mike,” said Sara, sharply, “stop being infantile. Someone has to go down there-I might even be the one. There are three of us, not counting Hoot, and we can’t send him down there. It must be one of us. So let’s just marshal all the angles. . .”

“But it’s not just going down to face them,” I protested. “We also have to bargain for the brain case. Tuck would get it all screwed up.”

We crouched, glaring at one another.

“Toss a coin,” I growled. “Would you settle for a toss?”

“A coin only has two sides,” said Sara.

“That’s enough,” I said. “You’re out of this. It’s either Tuck or I.”

“No coin,” said Tuck. “I’m the one who’s going.” Sara looked at me. “I think we should let him go,” she said. “He wants to. He is willing. He will do all right.”

“The bargaining?” I asked.

“We want the robot’s brain case,” said Tuck. “We’ll give almost anything for it if we have to give it and. . .”

“Up to and including the rifle,” said Sara.

I blew up at her. “Not the rifle! We may need that rifle badly. It’s the only thing we have.”

“We need the brain case, too,” said Sara. “Without it we are sunk. And we may not need the rifle. Since we’ve been here I have fired it once and even that once was a senseless piece of business.

“There were the men back in the gully.”

She shrugged. “They had weapons. How much good did the weapons do them?”

“All I can do,” said Tuck, “is to find if they have the case and if they’d be willing to let loose of it. The actual bargaining will come later. We can all take part in it.”

“All right,” I said.

Let him go ahead and make a mess of it. If he did maybe we could give up this silly hunt for Lawrence Arlen Knight and try to figure out how to get off this planet. Although I had only the most foggy of ideas how to go about it.

I walked over to Paint and unloaded him, piling the water tins to the side of the trail and draping Roscoe’s limp metal body over them.

“All right, sport,” I said to Tuck.

He walked over and got into the saddle. He looked down at me and held down his hand. I took it and there was more strength in those long, lean fingers than I had thought there’d be.

“Good luck,” I said to him, and then Paint went galloping over the hilltop, heading down the trail. We peeked over the hilltop, watching.

I had said good luck to him and meant it. God knows, the poor damn fool would need all the luck there was.

Somehow he looked small and pitiful, bouncing along on the hobby’s back, the hood pulled up around his face and his robe fluttering behind him.

The trail turned and dipped and we lost sight of him, but in a few minutes he reappeared, riding across the flat toward the milling centaurs. Someone in the milling crowd caught sight of him and a shout went up. All the centaurs spun around to look at him and the milling stopped.

This is it, I thought, and I was watching so hard that I held my breath. In another second they might rush him and that would be the end of it. But they didn’t rush him; they just stood and looked.

Paint went rocking forward, Tuck bouncing on him like a doll clothed in a scrap of brown cloth. And that doll of his, I thought...

“What about the doll?” I whispered to Sara. I don’t know why I whispered. It was foolish of me. I could have shouted and that herd of centaurs would not have paid attention. They were busy watching Tuck. “What about the doll? Did he leave it here?”

“No,” she said, “he took it with him. He tucked it underneath the belt and pulled the belt up tight to hold it.”

“For the love of Christ!” I said.

“You keep thinking,” he said, “that it is just a doll, that there’s something wrong with him to carry it around. But there isn’t. He sees something in it you and I can’t see. It’s not just a good luck charm, like a rabbit’s foot. It’s a good deal more than that. I’ve watched him with it. He handles it tenderly and reverently. As if it were religious. A Madonna, maybe.”

I scarcely heard the last of what she had to say, for Paint was getting close to the herd of centaurs and was slowing down. Finally, fifty feet or so from them, the hobby stopped and stood waiting. Tuck sat there like a lump. He hadn’t raised his hand in a peaceful gesture. He hadn’t done a thing; he’d just ridden up to them, sitting on Old Paint like a lumpy sack.

I looked around. Sara had the glasses trained on the flat.

“Is he talking to them,” I asked.

“I can’t tell,” she said. “He has the hood pulled up around his face.”

It was all to the good, I told myself. They hadn’t killed him out of hand. There might still be hope.

Two of the centaurs trotted out to meet him, maneuvering so there’d be one on each side of him.

“Here,” said Sara, handing me the glasses.

Through them I could see nothing of Tuck except the back of that pulled-up hood, but could plainly see the faces of the two centaurs. They were the faces of tough and strong-willed men, brutal faces. They were far more humanoid than I had expected them to be. They had the appearance of listening to Tuck and from time to time one or the other of them seemed to make short replies. Then, suddenly, they were laughing, great shouts of uproarious laughter, taunting, contemptuous laughter, and behind them the herd took up the laughter.

I put down the glasses and crouched there, listening to the distant booming of that mass laughter which echoed in the twisted hills and gullies.

Sara made a wry face at me. “I wonder what is happening,” she said.

“Old Tuck,” I told her, “has mulled it once again.”

The laughter quieted and died away and once again the two centaurs were talking with Tuck. I handed the glasses back to Sara. I could see as much as I wanted to see without the help of them.

One of the centaurs swung about and shouted to someone in the crowd. For a moment the three of them seemed to be waiting, then one of the centaurs in the crowd trotted out, carrying something that glittered in the sunlight.

“What is it?” I asked Sara, who had the glasses up.

“It’s a shield,” she said. “And there seems to be a belt of some sort. Now I can see. It’s a belt and sword. They’re giving them to Tuck.”

Paint was wheeling about and heading back, the sunlight glinting off the shield and sword that Tuck held in front of him in the saddle. And back on the flat, the centaurs again were hooting with mocking laughter. It rolled in upon us, wave after wave of sound and out on the flat Paint built up sudden speed. He was running like a startled rabbit. When he disappeared from view, the two of us sat back and looked at one another.

“We’ll soon know,” I said.

“I’m afraid,” said Sara, “that it won’t be good. Maybe we made a mistake. You were the one to go, of course. But he wanted to, so badly.”

“But why?” I asked. “Why did the poor fool want to go? Mock heroics? This is no time, I tell you. . .”

She shook her head. “Not mock heroics. Something more complicated than that. Tuck is a complex sort of person . . .”

“There’s something eating on him,” I said. “I’d like to know what it is.”

“He doesn’t think the way you and I do,” she said. “He sees things differently. There is something driving him. Not a physical something. Nothing physical like fear or ambition or envy. A mystical force of some sort. I know. You’ve always thought he was just another religico. Another faker. One of that wandering tribe that takes on pretended religious attributes to cover up their strangeness. But I tell you he isn’t. I’ve known him a lot longer than you have. . .”

Paint came plunging over the hilltop and, setting his rockers, skidded to a halt. Tuck, sagging in the saddle, let go of the shield and sword belt and they clattered to the ground.

Tuck sat there and stared at us, half-paralyzed.

“What about the brain case?” Sara asked. “Have they got it?”

Tuck nodded.

“Will they trade it?”

“Not trade,” he croaked. “Not sell it. They will fight for it. It’s the only way...”

“Fight for it?” I asked. “With a sword!”

“That’s what they gave it to me for. I told them I came in peace and peace, they said, was coward. They wanted me to fight immediately, but I said I had to go and pray and they laughed at that, but they let me leave.”

He slid off Paint and collapsed in a heap upon the ground.

“I cannot fight,” he shrilled at us. “I have never fought. I have never held a weapon in my hand until this day. I cannot kill. I refuse to kill. They said it would be fair. One of me against one of them, but...”

“But you couldn’t fight,” I said.

Sara snapped at me. “Of course he couldn’t fight. He doesn’t know a thing of fighting.”

“Stop that sniveling,” I snarled at him. “Get on your feet and get off that robe of yours.”

“You!” gasped Sara.

“Who the hell else?” I asked her. “He goes out and gums up the business. It’s up to me to go out and finish it. You want that brain case, don’t you?”

“But you have never used a sword, have you?”

“No, of course I haven’t. What do you think I am? A damned barbarian?”

Tuck hadn’t stirred. I reached down and jerked him to his feet. “Off with that robe!” I yelled. “We can’t keep them waiting down there.”

I jerked off my shirt and began to unlace my shoes.

“The sandals, too,” I said. “I’ll have to look like you.”

“They’ll know the difference,” Sara said. “You don’t look the least like Tuck.”

“With the hood pulled up around my face, they won’t know the difference. They won’t remember what he looked like. And even if they did, they wouldn’t care. They have a sucker and they know it. It’s a lark for them.”

I stood up and peeled off my trousers. Tuck hadn’t moved. “Get that robe off him,” I said to Sara. “That prayer of his can’t last too long. They’ll get impatient waiting for him. We don’t want them to come out hunting him.”

“Let’s give it up,” said Sara. “Let’s just admit that we are licked. We can head back down the trail. . .”

“They’d come after us,” I said. “We couldn’t outrun them. Get that robe off him.”

Sara moved toward him and Tuck suddenly came alive. He unfastened the belt and shrugged out of the robe, tossing it to me.

I put it on and cinched it around me, pulling the cowl over my head.

“You’ve never used a sword,” said Sara. “You’ll be going up against the best swordsman that ‘they have.”

“I’ll have one advantage,” I told her. “This man of theirs, no matter how good he is, will be convinced he is paired off with a sissy. He’ll be off guard. He may try being fancy. Or he won’t try too hard. He’ll be a show-off and try to make it look like play. If I can get to him. . .”

“Mike. . .”

“The sandals,” I, said.

Tuck kicked them toward me and I stepped into them.

He stood naked except for a dirty pair of shorts and he was the scrawniest human being I had ever seen. His stomach was so flat that it seemed to be sunk in toward his backbone and you could count every rib he owned. His arms and legs were pipestems.

I bent down to pick up the sword belt and strapped it about my waist. I took out the sword and had a look at it. It was a heavy, awkward weapon, a little rusted, not too sharp-but sharp enough. I jammed it back into the scabbard, picked up the shield and slid it on my arm.

“Good luck, Mike,” said Sara.

“Thanks,” I said. But I wasn’t thankful. I was just burned up. This blundering fool had gone out and messed up the detail and left me a dirty job to do and, deep inside of me, I wasn’t sure at all of the kind of job that I could manage.

I climbed on Paint and as the hobby turned to go. Tuck rushed over to me and stood there, in his dirty shorts, reaching up the doll to me, offering it to me.

I lashed out with my foot and struck his arm. The doll, jarred out of his grasp, went flying through the air.

Paint, turned now, went plunging up the hill and down the trail. The centaurs were still as they had been before. I had been afraid that I might meet them, streaming up the trail, coming to get Tuck.

At my appearance they sent up a mocking cheer.

We reached the flat on which the centaurs were gathered and Paint went rocketing toward them at a steady clip. One of the centaurs trotted out to meet me and Paint stopped, facing him. He had a shield, exactly like the one I carried, and a sword belt strapped around one shoulder.

“You return,” he said. “We had not thought you would.”

“I remain still a man of peace,” I said, “Is there no other way?”

“Peace be coward,” he said.

“You insist?” I asked.

“There is,” he said, “no other way of honor.” He was mocking me.

“Speaking of honor,” I said, “how do I know that when I get through killing you I will get the sphere?”

“You speak most lightly of killing me,” he said.

“One of us must die,” I told him.

“That is true,” he said, “but it will be you.”

“Just on the chance that you are wrong,” I insisted, “how about the sphere?”

“In the unlikely event that you still live,” he said, “it will be brought to you.”

“And I’ll be allowed to leave in peace?”

“You insult me,” he said, in cold anger. “You insult my race.”

“I am a stranger here,” I said. “I do not know your race.”

“We are honorable,” he said, the words gritted through his teeth.

“In that case,” I said, “let us proceed to business.”

“The rules must be observed,” he said. “Each of us will move back and turn around to face each other. You note the fabric on the pole?”

I nodded. Someone in the crowd of centaurs was holding up a pole with a dirty piece of cloth tied to it.

“When the symbol falls,” he said, “the fight begins.” I nodded and kicked Paint in the ribs to get him turned around. I rode a few paces, then turned Paint around again. The centaur also had turned around and we were facing one another. The pole with the dirty piece of cloth still was held on high. The centaur unsheathed his sword and I followed his example.

“Paint, old hoss,” I said, “now we’re in for it.”

“Most honored sir,” Paint told me, “I shall strive my utmost in our cause.”

The pole with the dirty rag came down.

We rushed together. Paint was going full speed after the first two swings he made upon his rockers, and the centaur was thundering down upon us, his driving hoofs cutting great clots of earth out of the ground and throwing them behind him. He held his sword on high and his shield was raised above his head. As he charged toward us he let go with a strange shrill yodeling warwhoop that was enough to freeze the blood.

Not more than a couple of seconds could have elapsed between the time the flag had dropped and we were upon one another and in those two seconds (if it were two seconds) my suddenly busy mind thought of at least a dozen clever tricks by which I could outsmart my opponent, and as speedily dropped them all. In that last moment, I knew there was nothing I could do other than try to catch the blow of his sword upon my shield and to try, by whatever means presented itself, to get in a blow of my own.

My mind dropped its wild flurry of ideas and became a hard, cold block and a grimness settled on me and I knew that this was it. I had to finish him off quickly or he would finish me and the matter of my finishing him must depend largely upon luck, for I had no skill and no time to learn the skill.

I saw his sword coming down in a full-armed swinging stroke and I knew also that my sword was swinging at his head, driven by every ounce of strength I could muster in my arm. His eyes were half-closed and beady and his face wore a look of self-satisfied alertness.

For he knew he had me. He knew I had no chance. From many little things that he had noted, he must have sensed that I was no expert swordsman and was at an utter disadvantage.

His sword struck the edge of my shield so hard that my arm was numbed and the blade went skidding off it to go slicing past my shoulder. But even as this happened, he jerked suddenly, beginning to rear up and backward. A glazed look flitted across his face and the arm that held the shield dropped away and the edge of my sword came down squarely on top his head, driven with all the strength I had, slicing into his skull and bisecting his face to drive deep into his neck.

And in that instant before my blade had struck him, when his face had taken on that glazed look and his shield arm had sagged away, I had glimpsed the black hole which blossomed in his forehead, on a line between and just above his eyes. But I saw it only for a fraction of a second, for almost as soon as it appeared, the sword was slicing through it, almost as if it had been placed there to show me where to strike.