Neq the Sword

CHAPTER TWENTY

It was just a faint whiff, but it brought a rash of strange feelings. Neq followed his nose.

There was a tiny crack in the wall he hadn't noticed before. From a distance it looked like an imperfection in the finish, but now he discovered that it was deep. Had

Bob had a secret compartment in his office, along with all the rest?

He inserted the corner of a sheet of paper into it and probed. The paper disappeared--and now he had lost his weapons-production statistics for the past month! There was space in there, all right--and the odor was jetting out, a very small current of air.

He fetched a dagger and maneuvered it into the crack with his pincers. He pried. Something snapped, and a section of the wall swung in. There was a passage here--

one he had missed, and might never have found, except for the little smell.

He peered in. It was dark, of course, and there was a warm draft. The odor was much stronger.

It was a man-hewn tunnel into the unexplored subterranean wilderness of Mt. Helicon. Anything at all could lie within, and the chances were more than even that it was deadly. This called for an armed party.

Neq shrugged and entered, alone. The stimulating breath of fragrance washed down along the corridor, lightening his step, and the stone and metal walls seemed to widen. This was Bob's escape route--and he had been right, a man needed such an exit from the tedium of leadership.

Vara had borne a fine boy and named him Vari. She had spent a reasonable period recovering and tending the baby, then begun sharing. Sosa spent considerable time with the baby also, and already it seemed as though Vari were hers. Three months after the first birth, Vara was pregnant again, and not by Neq.

Sola, too, conceived, and her joy transformed her. The two women became closer, not as mother and daughter but as sister-expectants, comparing notes and talking about plans for the Helicon nursery facilities and schooling of children. They were fine examples for the others, and the problems of the sharing system were diminishing.

Neq walked on, in a daze of memory despite the danger of exploring the unknown alone. He had a flashlight, for he never could anticipate when he might need light in Helicon, and he used it to pick out his path through the expanding passage. Now there was no metal, and the rock bore mosslike growths and was convoluted into treelike formations.

Jim the Gun had completed his initial renovation of the equipment and instituted a training program for operation and maintenance so that the work could carry on without him. "I'm not leaving," he said. "I like it here. Machines are my thing, and these are wondrous! But accidents happen, and I am aging."

As the machinery of Helicon moved toward capacity production--the capacity of the human attendants, not the machines--the exports to the crazies increased. The old trucks were renovated, for Helicon produced motors and tires and gasoline and gears, and the six trucks the crazies had been able to maintain became twenty, then fifty. Nomads had to be recruited as drivers and guards, being paid in food and good weapons and medicine. The trucks always traveled in convoys: one for the payload, another filled with warriors armed and spoiling for battle, the third carrying gasoline and replacement parts and food and similar staples. A new tribe formed: the trucker tribe, dedicated to this service. The existence and function of Helicon w,as no longer secret, of course, but the conditions of admittance remained stringent. The Truckers felt they had the best of it: Helicon provisions, a rambling nomad life. Many died in the actions against greedy outlaws, but this was the nomad way. Heroism.

The trail wandered between the overhanging trees, tunnel-like. Neq walked faster, eager to get where he was going.

He had wanted to have a crew lay down a telephone cable from Helicon to the main crazy outpost. But the expenditure in manpower would have been prohibitive, since they would have had either to raise the wire out of the casual reach of the outlaws, or bury it where it could not be found. There were mountains and rivers and badlands along the route. He had to settle for continuous radio contact, which would soon become television contact.

Dick the Surgeon started a hospital where nomads could receive medical attention and such drugs as required. But this posed another problem: either he had to leave Helicon, or nomads had to be admitted on a temporary basis. The old guidelines were inadequate. Neq dispensed with them. A portion of the underworld was blocked off from the rest, and a separate entrance opened. Dick began training those nomads who were interested in the potentials of medicine, though most of these were illiterate and ignorant. He had to devise simplified picture-codes for prescriptions: a circle with a jagged arrow through it representing a headache for aspirin; the outline of a tooth for novocaine; a squiggle representing a germ for antibiotics. He made sure no dangerous drugs were available without his supervision, and the system worked well enough. The nomad trainees were not stupid; they merely had to leam.

But Neq declared that the children of Helicon should be literate. He set the example by attending classes himself, painstakingly mastering the words: MAN, ROOM, FOOD, HONOR. There was an enormous amount to be learned from the old books, and the new generation would not be able to improve on the past without understanding it. The present generation was too busy to practice reading, and Neq had to graduate after building a vocabulary of twenty words, but he knew that once Helicon was thoroughly established the priorities would change.

Yes, it was all going well. Neq was as successful in running Helicon as he had been in running his own tribe for the empire.

This region was familiar. The contour of the route, the type of forest--there was a dead-spoked giant pine he remembered. The memories were at once poignant and horrible, but he had to go on.

Vara's love had proved fickle. It was apparent that her affair with him had been the swing of the pendulum, compensation for her prior abuse of him. And his love for her--it had never compared to the sublime passion he had had for Neqa. He had succumbed to the lure of young flesh, thinking the experience more meaningful than it was. Vara had merely started sharing early, that Helicon might be repopulated.

Neqa: there was the meaning of it all. He had done what he had done to bring back the world that sponsored her kind--but he had not brought her back. This was where Yod's barricade had been set across the trail, balking their truck. Yod's tribe was gone now, of course, and even the staring skulls on poles were gone. Vengeance....

It was time to make camp, for he had come far. Neq bared his sword to cut down saplings for a temporary lean-to. The gleaming steel reminded him: had he demonstrated just a bit of his sworder-skill and agreed to join Yod's outlaw tribe, he could have saved his hands and Neqa's life. Were he in the same situation today, he would do it. She would have had to share--but would that have been so very different from Vara's sharing at Helicon, after bearing the child of her husband's murderer? Would Neqa have been unworthy of his love after bearing Yod's child? She could have borne fifty children by other men, if that were the price of preserving her life! With greater circumspection he could have bided his time and eventually assumed the mastery of the tribe and recovered his woman. He had acted impetuously--and paid a grievous price.

Dusk--and someone was coming!

Neq's blade lifted, ready. He did not wish to kill--but this place was in its way sacred to him, and the man who abused his privacy would be in trouble.

In the gloom of evening beneath the dense forest, Neq paced the man more by sound than sight. The tread was light yet not furtive.

Now he saw the figure: small, very small, with no visible weapon.

"Neq!"

By the voice he knew her: Sosa.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, knowing she had followed him all the way from the mountain: several days swift march. Did she seek to bring him back as he had brought Sola back?

"I smelled the flowers," she said. "I tend them now, and I thought it was a leak, but it wasn't. So I traced it to your office... I'm almost immune, after these months with the vine. But you--"

Neq stepped toward her, lifting the sword. But even in the worst of his vengeance he had not attacked women.

"I was afraid of that," she murmured. "I'll have to watch you, until I can locate the plants and shut them off."

She walked by him, passing quite close, and he was aware of her athletic surprisingly attractive body. Women didn't have to fade as they aged! Bemused, he followed her, not certain what she intended or what he desired.

Then he recognized her destination. "Stay clear of that grave!" he cried.

"Grave? That's your real wound, isn't it?" she said. "Ah, I think this is it. The passage is blocked, but there's an updraft--"

She began to scrape away the leaves and twigs that covered the site of Neqa's grave, exposing the rich earth beneath. "This is garbage!" she exclaimed.

Neq raised the sword again. "Stop, or surely you must die!"

"I'm doing this for you," she said, continuing. "The draft is bringing the fumes straight out. The flowers must be just beyond this refuse."

"I would not slay a woman," Neq said, his blade poised above her body. "But if I must--"

"In a moment I'll have it," she said. "Meanwhile, please don't threaten me with that thing. If you knew how many times I have been widowed, you woujd see that your sorrow is hardly unique. I don't care what you think you see; I have a job to do here."

He saw that she would not stop. But he could not allow Neqa's bones to be defiled.

He spread his arms so that the sword would not strike her and moved forward, shoving her aside with his body. His own torso would guard the sacred earth!

But Sosa's dirt-caked hands came up, striking him across the neck so that he choked. She got her little shoulder under him and somehow threw him back. "Please stay clear," she said quietly. "There may be danger, and I have to get this junk out."

Now he remembered what Vara had said about this woman. She was skilled, circle-skilled, with her bare hands! She had taught the Weaponless his art. It was folly to attempt to wrestle with her.

Numbly, he watched the hole deepen. It was not mere bones she was searching out. He had no idea whether anything at all remained of Neqa after all these years. It was the associations of Neqa--the manner she had died, the way he had acted then. The nightmare portion of his nomad dream, that he had tried to put aside. Rape, murder, anguish, vengeance, futility....

She struck solidity. Horrified, Neq shone the light as she reached down, grasped, and hauled up--

A hooflike foot.

Appalled, Neq stumbled back. This was the cairn of Var the Stick--the other nightmare!

The foot stirred, the gross blunted toes twitching. Earth showered off as the hairy leg kicked out of the ground.

"Oh-oh," Sosa said. "I didn't expect this'" She scrambled away from the hole.

An arm came up, levering against the surface. The body heaved. The corpse sat up.

The shock of it sobered Neq momentarily, and he realized that he was under the influence of the narcotic vine-flowers, as Sosa had tried to tell him. They must have seeded here, for the fumes were actually pollen, and there had been some leakages. If there were earth here, and moisture, and occasional light, the vines could have sprouted and bloomed.

The corpse was neither Neqa nor Var, but some living thing climbing out of the partially stopped passage. Something manlike--but what? Already his vision was becoming distorted again, for the fumes were heavy in this semi-confined space.

Neq tapped on the glockenspiel with his pincers, but could not think of a suitable song for the occasion. "I thought you were dead!" Sosa cried at the shape. A grotesquely formless head swiveled to cover her. "Hel-Helicon dead!" it growled.

"Helicon lives!" Neq cried, discovering suddenly loyalty after his recent, drug-strengthened doubts. He brought up his sword--and hesitated, knowing that so long as he saw it as a sword, the narcotic was ruling his mind. "Stop those flowers!" he cried at Sosa. "Use my flashlight--"

She came immediately and took it from him. She could use it far more effectively than he could with the pincers. She flashed it into the hole, searching for the vines that had to be near.

Neq faced the creature. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Dead!" the thing repeated. It stood near the hole, as tall as a man, but with a scarred, hairless head.

"It's Bob," Sosa said. "Master of Helicon."

The former master! So he had escaped Sol's vengeance!

"I am master now," Neq said. "You and I must settle."

"Get out of here, Neq!" Sosa cried. "He's a real killer, and you're under the influence of the--"

"This way," Bob said. His voice was barely intelligible, as though it had not been used for years.

"Don't go there!" Sosa cried. "He's mad!"

The men ignored her. Bob descended into the grave and Neq followed, feeling with his pincers to locate the perimeters. He crawled along on elbows and knees, keeping his sword clear of the rubble. Sosa did not follow.

They emerged into a palatial cavern whose floor angled down into a steaming river: the Helicon water supply. It was hot here, and there was light: electric light from bulbs set in the ceiling.

"You've had power here--the whole time?"

"Certainly." Bob's voice was clearer now that he was in his own territory, and the flower fragrance was fading. "I prepared this refuge well, in case of need.There's a vent to the summit of the mountain, with a ladder and escape hatch."

"Why did you stay here, then?"

"It's cold up there." That was an understatement. The top of the mounatin was always covered with snow, and death lurked in the form of countless cliffs and crevasses and avalanches. Mighty storms spun off the glaciers, feeding the melt-rivers of the snowline whose waters plunged into these atomically heated interior caverns. It would take a desperate man indeed to leave comfort like this to endure that.

"You are alone?" It was hard to believe that any man could endure seven years in complete isolation.

"Of course not. I have a most obliging and disciplined tribe. Come--you must see. I have no envy of your position." He showed the way along the river to a series of offshoot caverns.

There were animals here--mutant badlands creatures of diverse shapes and sizes. Some slunk away as the men approached, but others seemed to be tame. "These?" Neq asked.

"This is part of it. These are workers and gatherers-- illiterate, of course. They do an excellent job of tending and harvesting the hydroponics, but they aren't very intelligent."

Neq saw that the ratlike individuals were nipping bits of fungus from crevices and carrying them away. "Hydroponics," he agreed.

"You really must meet my wife," Bob said expansively. "One thing about the life of the Helicon master: no woman to yourself."

"I know." So one of the women had come there tool

"That forced objectivity, when there are constant decisions of life and death, and no personal life--it isn't Helicon you've inherited, it's Hell."

Neq had learned about Hell through his songs. The parallel seemed apt enough. "I saw your traces in the dining room. I wondered who had visited."

"Traces? Not mine. I blocked up the passage with refuse and never used it, until you started burrowing from the other side just now. I had to investigate that commotion, of course."

Refuse--and the vine-flower spores had rooted there, downwind from Bob's caverns but upwind from Helicon. They had grown and blossomed, betraying the secret.

Sosa had not been excavating Neqa's grave or Var's cairn, but Bob's refuge.

"Why did you try to kill the child Soli?" Neq asked as though it were a matter of mere curiosity. Once he had a clear answer coinciding with what he already knew of the matter, he could consider his action. This time he would make no precipitous mistake!

"I never tried to kill her. I tried to save Helicon."

"You failed."

"The failure was not mine. I knew that no nomad would kill either a woman or a child, especially one as fetching as little Soli. I knew that the barbarian warrior, meeting her in the secrecy of the mesa, would either allow her the victory or hide her unharmed and claim the victory himself. In either case, Helicon was safe."

Bob, sealed in these caverns, could not have known the story of Var and Soli. He had calculated correctly-- except for the human factor within Helicon. "Safe?"

"If she had the victory, the nomads were honor-bound to lift the siege. If she were announced dead, my revelation of her identity would neutralize the nomad leader and have the same effect. Sos knew how to put pressure on the mountain; he was a superb military tactician, and he had studied our defenses from inside. He might have won--but no other nomad would have had either the motive or the ability."

Somehow it made sense--except that it had failed. "Why didn't you tell the others your strategy?"

"A leader never tips his hand in advance. Surely you know that. I had to make it work, then explain it or not, as seemed best. Premature information could have been disastrous."

Neq wondered how well his song and flower gambit would have worked, had the group known what he was doing before he assumed the leadership. He knew the answer. Bob was right. Except: "But Sol fired Helicon!"

Bob glanced at him. "That barbarian? He lacked the wit. _I_ fired Helicon."

Amazed, Neq said nothing.

"Somehow the fool librarian got hold of some of the information and the word spread before I was ready to explain. Sol charged toward my office intending to attack me personally, and I saw in the monitors that the others actually sided with the fool. I have no tolerance for such short-sightedness. So I pushed the DESTRUCT button on my desk and came here. I never cared to return; it would have been messy."

"Vengeance?" Neq asked softly, muscles taut.

"There is no profit in vengeance; you'll learn that one day," Bob said condescendingly. "It was merely practicality. When discipline deteriorates, the organization is defunct. It is kinder to terminate it outright."

"But the entire nomad society collapsed!"

Bob shrugged. "One must accept the consequence of one's mistakes."

It was plausible. Bob had known what he was doing. When others had tried to interfere, he had acted most effectively to suppress the mutiny. This was true leadership. Had Bob been in Neq's situation seven years ago, he would have arranged to kill Yod before Neqa ever was threatened. Neq knew that next to this man he was an innocent; he lacked the fortitude to do what was necessary. Neq had blundered through life, either prevailing extemporaneously or suffering harshly.

They came to another large cavern. "Ah, here she is," Bob said. "A fine, loyal woman who embodies the very principles of obedience and trust and discretion I require. Had the functionaries of Helicon only been similar..."

A shaggy, beariike creature with aquatic flipper-feet shuffled up: another fringe mutant. "Pleased to meet you, Boba," Neq said.

"Not Boba--that's decadent nomad nomenclature," Bob corrected him. "Mrs. Bob."

Neq nodded gravely. "Now I understand."

They met him the other side of the grave-dump. "What happened?" Jim demanded. "Did you kill him?"

"Of course not," Neq said, walking briskly on. "There is no profit in vengeance."

"But Bob was responsible for all the--" Sosa began.

"He has accepted the consequence of his mistake," Neq said. "As have I. Seal off the passage, and don't worry about the vines there; they make no difference." The fragrance was strong here, and he wanted to get out of it before his judgment was distorted again.

"Almost forgot," Jim said. "Someone's been trying to reach us on the radio--not the crazies. I had it switched to your office, but--"

In moments" Neq was there. The voice emerging from the speaker was foreign. He strode out of the tunnel and touched his broadcast button. "Speak English!" he snapped. "This is Helicon." Too bad the narcotic didn't make all things intelligible!

After a brief delay another voice came through, accented. "This is the Andes station. We have been trying to reach you. There has been no contact for seven years--"

"Merely an interruption," Neq said.

"But we sent an envoy by helicopter two years ago, and he reported that your premises were deserted--"

So that was the mysterious visitor! "There has been a change in personnel. We regret that our former leader, Robert, has had to retire. I am Neq. You may deal with me henceforth."

The voice sounded worried. "We dealt many years with Robert. How did he die?"

"Please, Andes!" Neq said, affecting shock. "Helicon is civilized! Bob left his position in order to devote his full energies to his wife--a charming creature. Send your representative again and we'll introduce him."

There was a pause. Then: "That will not be necessary. Are you in normal operation again? Do you need assistance?"

"How is your supply of young women?" Neq asked.

"How is your supply of electronic equipment?"

Neq smiled. He had a job to do, and suddenly he liked it.