The Horse Barbarians

20

“Let me talk to him, please,” Meta asked.

Kerk waved her away and clutched the microphone, almost swallowing it in his giant hand.

“Listen to me now, Jason,” he said coldly. “None of us is with you in this adventure. You will not explain your purpose and you will gain nothing except destruction. If Temuchin controls the lowlands, too, we will never replace him and open the mines. Rhes has returned to Anmih and is organizing resistance to your invasion. Some here have voted to join him. I am going to ask you for the last time. Stop what you are doing before it is too late.”

When Jason’s voice sounded from the radio, it had a curious flat quality, whether the fault of the transmission on that of the speaker it was hard to say.

“Kerk, I hear what you say and, believe me, I understand it. But it is too late now to turn back. Most of the army has gone through the caves and we’ve captured a number of inoropes from the villages. Nothing I say could stop Temuchin now. This thing will have to be seen through to its conclusion. The lowlanders may win, though I doubt it. Temuchin is going to rule, above and below the cliffs, and in the end this will all be for the best.”

“No!” Meta shouted, puffing at the microphone. “Jason, listen to me. You cannot do this. You came to us and helped us, and we believed in you. You showed us that life is not only kill and be killed. We know now that the war on Pyrrus was wrong because you showed us, and we only came to this planet because you asked us to. Now it seems, I think, it is as though you were betraying us. You have tried to teach us how not to kill and, believe me, we have tried to learn. Yet what you are doing now is worse than anything we ever did on Pyrrus. There, at least, we were fighting for our lives. You don’t have that excuse. You have shown that monster, Temuchin, a way to make new wars and to kill more people. How can you justify that?”

Static rustled hoarsely in the speaker while they waited the long moments for Jason to speak. When he did he sounded suddenly very tired.

“Meta… I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you, but it is too late. They’re looking for me and I have to hide this radio before they get here. What I’m doing is right. Try to believe that. Someone a long time ago said that you cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. Meaning you cannot bring about social change without hurting someone. People are being hurt and are dying because of me and don’t think I’m not aware of it. But… listen, I can’t talk any more. They’re right outside.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Meta, if I never see you again, just remember one thing. It’s an old-fashioned word, but it is in a lot of languages. The library can translate it for you and give you the meaning.

“This is better by radio. I doubt if I could say it right to your face. You’re stronger than I am, Meta, and your reflexes are a lot better, but you are still a woman. And, hell, I want to say that I… love you. Good luck. Signing off.”

The speaker clicked and the room was silent.

“What was that word he used?” Kerk asked.

“I think I know,” she answered, and she turned her face away so he could not see it.

“Hello, control!” a voice shouted. “Radio room here. A sub-space message coming in from Pyrrus with an emergency classification.”

“Put it through,” Kerk ordered.

There was the rustle of interstellar static, then the familiar drumbeat warble of the jump-space carrier wave. Superimposed on top of it was the quick, worried voice of a Pyrran.

“Attention, all stations within zeta radius. Emergency message for planet Felicity, ship’s receiver Pugnacious, code Ama Rona Pi, 290-63 3-087. Message follows. Kerk, anyone there. Trouble hit. All the quadrants. We’ve shortened the perimeter, abandoned most of the city. Don’t know if we can hold. Bnucco says this is something new and that conventional weapons won’t stop it. We can use the fire power of your ship. If you can return, come at once. Message ends.”

The radio room had put the sub-space message through to all compartments of the ship and, in the horrified silence that followed its ending, running footsteps sounded from both connecting passageways. As the first men burst in, Kerk came to life and shouted his commands.

“All men to stations. We blast as soon as we’re secured. Call in the outside guards. Release all the prisoners. We’re leaving.”

There was absolutely no doubt about that. It was inconceivable that any Pyrran could have acted otherwise. Their home, their city, was on the verge of destruction, perhaps already gone. They ran to their posts.

“Rhes,” Meta said. “He’s with the army. How can we reach him?”

Kerk thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘We cannot, that is the only answer. We’ll leave the launch for him on the same island where we make the contacts. Record a broadcast telling him what has happened and set it on automatic to broadcast every hour. When he gets back to a radio, he will pick it up. The launch will be locked so no one else can get in. There is medicine in it, even a jump-space communicator. He will be all right.”

“He won’t like it.”

“It’s the best we can do. Now we have to ready for blast off.”

They worked as a team driven by a common urge. Back. Return to Pyrrus. Their city was in danger. The ship lifted at 17G’s, and Meta would have used more power if the structure of the ship could have withstood it. Their course through jump-space was the quickest and the most dangerous that could be computed. There were no complaints about the time the journey took: they accepted this period with stoic resignation. But weapons were readied and there was little or no conversation. Each Pyrran held, locked within him, the knowledge that their world and their life faced extinction, and these things cannot be discussed.

Hours before the Pugnacious was scheduled to break out of jumpspace, every man and woman aboard was armed and waiting. Even nineyear-old Gnif was there, a Pyrran like all the others. From the eye-hurting otherness of jump-space to the black of interstellar space to the high atmosphere of Pyrrus the ship sped. Downward in a screaming ballistic orbit, where the hull heated to just below its melting point and the coolers labored against the overtaxing load. Their bodies reacted, sweat dripped from their faces and soaked their clothes, but the Pyrrans were unaware of the heat. The picture from the bow pickup was put on every screen in the ship. Jungle flashed by, then a high column of smoke climbed up on the distant horizon. Diving swiftly, like a striking bird of prey, the ship swooped down.

The jungle now occupied the city. A circular mound, covered with plants and tough growth, was the only trace of the once impregnable perimeter walL As they came low, they could see thornlike creepers bursting through the windows of the buildings. Animals moved slowly through the streets that had once been crowded with people, while a clawhawk perched on the tower of the central warehouse, the masonry crumbling under its weight.

As they flew on, they could see that the smoke was coming from the crushed ruin of their spaceship. It appeared to have been caught on the ground at the spaceport and was held down by a now blackened net of giant vines.

There were no signs of activity anywhere in the ruined city. Just the beasts and plants of deathworld, now strangely quiet and sluggish with their enemy gone, the motivations of hatred that had enraged them for so long now vanished. They stirred and reared when the ship passed over, quickened to life again as the raw emotions of the surviving Pyrrans impressed upon them..

“They can’t all be dead,” Teca said in a choked voice. “Keep looking.”

“I am quartering the entire area,” Meta told him.

Kerk found the destruction almost impossible to look at, and when he spoke, his voice was low, as though he were talking only to himself.

“We knew that it had to end like this, sometime. We faced that and tried to make a new start on a new planet. But, knowing something will happen and seeing it before your eyes, those are two different things. We ate there, in that… ruin, slept in that one. Our friends and comrades were here, our entire life. And now it is gone.”

“Go down!” Clon said, thinking nothing, feeling hatred. “Attack. We can still fight.”

“There is nothing left to fight for,” Teca told him, speaking with an immense weariness. “As Kenk said, it is gone.”

A hull pickup detected the sound of gunfire, and they rocketed toward it with momentary hope. But it was just an automatic gun still actuating itself in a repeating pattern. Soon it would be out of am’munition and would be still like the rest of the ruined city.

The radio light had been blinking for some time before someone noticed it. The call was on the wavelength of Rhes’s headquarters, not the one the city had used. Kerk reached oven slowly and switched the set to receive.

“Naxa here, can you hear me? Come in, Pugnacious.”

“Kerk here. We are over the city. We are… too late. Can you give me a report?”

“Too late by days,” Naxa snorted. “They wouldn’t listen to us. We said we could get them out, give them a place to go to, but they wouldn’t listen. Just like they wanted to die in the city. Once the perimeter went down, the survivors holed up in one of the buildings and it sounded like everything on this planet hit them at once. We couldn’t take it, standing by I mean. Everyone volunteered. We took the best men and all the armored ground cars from the mine. Went in there. Got out the kids, they made the kids go, some of the women. The wounded, just the ones who were unconscious. The rest stayed. We just got out before the end. Don’t ask me what it was like. Then it was all over, the fighting, and after a bit everything quieted down like you see it now. Whole planet quieted down. When we could, me and some of the other talkers went to see. Had to climb a mountain of bodies of every creature born. Found the right spot. The ones that stayed behind, they’re all dead. Died fighting. Only thing we could bring back then was a bunch of records that Brucco left.”

“They would not have had it any other way,” Kerk said. “Let us know where the survivors are and we will go there at once.”

Naxa gave the coordinates and said, “What’re you going to do now?”

“We’ll contact you again. Over and out.”

“What are we going to do now?” Teca asked. “There’s nothing left for us here.”

“There’s nothing for us on Felicity either. As long as Temuchin rules, we cannot open the mines,” Kerk answered.

“Go back. Kill Temuchin,” Teca said, his power holster humming. He wanted revenge, to kill something.

“We can’t do that,” Kerk said. Patiently, because he knew the torture the man was feeling. “We will discuss this later. We must first see to the survivors.”

“We have lost everywhere,” Mete said, voicing the words that everyone was thinking.

Silence followed.