The Best Of Lester Del Rey Part 15

Kayel came to slowly, blinking. His fingers groped up to find his gla.s.ses still on his nose. "My pipe!" he squeaked, and ducked down for it. Then he straightened, staring at Derek. "We're alive!"

"No thanks to you," Derek said curtly. He flipped a switch and the s.h.i.+eld over the viewing panel began sliding up, just as Siryl and Ferad came in. They looked exhausted, but less shaken than Kayel-probably because they hadn't known what was going on. "Don't start cheering yet. There are people here-and there shouldn't be on any sun-grazed planet we haven't recol-onized. With my luck, I've probably landed us right hi the middle of an enemy colony!"

"Luck!" Siryl snorted. Then she reddened faintly at his look, but went on stubbornly. "The enemy are com- pulsive troglodytes-they don't build surface dwellings. And look at that,"

The s.h.i.+eld had come up enough to show fields around them, apparently corn and potatoes. Beyond, the edge of the town could be seen, built in low structures of crude stone and thatching.

"An agricultural culture," Siryl guessed quickly. "Look-there's one! See, coming through the field. We're in luck. Primitive agricultural societies are usually peaceful."

Several people were filing toward the s.h.i.+p, showing no sign of fear. They were dressed in rough pants with serapes or blankets thrown over their shoulders.

The men wore beards with hair to their shoulders, all of a uniform brown except for the graybeard in front. The women were distinguished only by thick plaits around their heads. They were a healthy looking bunch.

The graybeard moved to the viewing panel, waving at them with some bit of what seemed to be stone in his hand. His motions indicated that they were to come out. Derek shrugged faintly and nodded. He headed toward the door.

Siryl caught his arm. "Where are you going?" "Out. You said they were peaceful." "Usually peaceful," she qualified hastily. "But-" "Unless they're superst.i.tious about sky devils, eh? I'm still going out." He headed down the nearest pa.s.sage that would lead to a lock. There was nothing else to do. Their few weapons were gone, along with their tools and the big s.p.a.ce-decoupled signaling transmitter. The Sepelora was only a converted freighter and her hull was too thin to withstand any concerted attack by even primitive agriculturists. If the worst had to happen, it was better to get it over with at once.

Siryl hesitated for a second. Then her heels tapped out a steady pace behind him, while the other two followed reluctantly. She caught up with Derek and marched beside him. If she was afraid, there was no sign of it. He opened the inner lock, then the outer, and dropped to the field of stubble. As he landed, the gray-beard came around the curve of the s.h.i.+p.The old man's lips parted in what might have been a smile, and words came out, slowly at first, then more rapidly in the cla.s.sic greetings of Twenty-fifth- Century English.

When the words finally ceased, Derek stepped forward and began a careful reply. Cla.s.sic English was the basic language from which that of his own planet had been derived, and he'd studied it during eight long years of schooling, without ever expecting to use it.

The graybeard turned back to his people and stood silently for a minute, glancing sideways at the four. Siryl was staring at Derek in surprise. "I did a paper on Ae-van's work," she said. "So I had to learn Cla.s.sic. That's the pure language, unchanged after thirteen hundred years! And primitive cultures don't preserve dead languages-speech changes from century to century."

Derek shrugged. She knew a lot of things with the certainty of the teachers who had taught her. It wouldn't be the first time the authorities were wrong.

He forgot it as the old man came forward.

"My name is Skora. I'm the-the priest of the village." He gestured to his people. "We've decided that you are welcome on the planet of G.o.d. And we're happy that you landed safely. I saw your s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p so late that there was hardly time to use the G.o.d power to land you without harm to us. If you'll walk back with us, there will be shelter and warmth. The nights are quite cold here."

Derek turned the offer over in his mind. He'd have preferred to stay with the s.h.i.+p, but wisdom dictated otherwise. "That's kind of you. We're much obliged."

He was proud of remembering the phrase.

The old man nodded, while his eyes examined the others. A smile etched his face as he spotted Ferad's hungry looks at one of the younger women. "She's unmarried," he said. "Tell him she likes him! She shall be his!"

Siryl translated quickly. "Accept!" she urged, though Ferad's fat face indicated no need to such advice.

"You'll insult them otherwise. Derek, I was right. They're primitives- hospitable, provincial, superst.i.tious. Did you notice how he called this the planet of G.o.d? And how he thinks he landed you with some incantation?"

Derek grunted something she took for a.s.sent. Let the old man have full credit; prayer or magic was as good an explanation as any other. He studied the quiet group as they moved toward the village.

"Maybe," he said. "But I'd like to know how your primitives knew about s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+ps and safe landings! And I'm curious about how he knew we had to translate the language for Ferad when both of us were pretty fluent in it. Another thing-he said the nights are cold here, as if he knew they aren't on all the planets."

For once, she was as silent as the natives. Derek had been hoping she'd have an answer, and her silence added to his doubts. Something was out of order on Skora's planet of G.o.d!

3.

The house a.s.signed to them had proved surprisingly comfortable after they learned to work the peat-burning fireplace. The food had been pa.s.sable, if a man liked cereals and mutton. Derek had gone to sleep readily enough, to his surprise. But dawn had found him awake. No attempt was made to stop him as he walked out of the village, past the undisturbed Sepelora, and on to the low hills beyond the tilled land. Siryl was apparently right in a.s.suming they were safe, once bread had been broken.

But his uncertainty returned as he studied the view from the top of the nearest hill. The solar explosion had hit hard at one time; the ground was ashy in places and actually melted to slag hi others. A few plants grew here and there, but thinned out in the distance, indicating they had spread from the village. There were no trees anywhere. By all indications, rainfall must be infrequentand light. The village seemed like a bit of another world, transplanted into the wasteland.

From the top of another hill Derek spotted what must be a second village, perhaps four miles away, also green and thriving. He stared about for a road between the two towns. No path led out of either.

Men were already in the fields as he returned. Some stood quietly watching their sheep and goats; others were puttering about in ways he couldn't understand. There was none of the grimness he'd always a.s.sociated with living off the ground on backward planets.

Beside the field where the Sepelora had landed, Derek saw a young man pus.h.i.+ng a stick along the ground, leaving a furrow of turned earth behind. There was no sign of a plowshare, aside from a piece of bent wire, and the man was using only his own muscular power, but he was obviously plowing. From his effortless motion, he was either inhumanly strong or the ground was incredibly soft.

Derek reached over for a handful of dirt, but it seemed normal enough.

"Good morning, Derek. I'm Michla." The plowman had stopped and walked over, leaving the stick standing. He took some of the dirt and rubbed it between his palms. "Too dry. I'll have to bring some rain tonight."

Derek shook his hand, finding it no stronger than that of any normal man.

"Glad to know you, Michla. I've been wondering how your plow works."

"See for yourself." Michla led the way to it, pulling the implement up. It was only what Derek had seen--a stick with a bit of bent wire and a curiously shaped handle made of baked clay and covered with curlicues. "I hold the amulet and guide it. G.o.d turns over the dirt. It hasn't changed since G.o.d showed us how to farm."

Derek could see no sign of the burrowing machine that must be located below the ground, guided by a signal from the stick. He frowned, reluctantly deciding that it was safer to accept the explanation until he could learn more about their customs. "This G.o.d you wors.h.i.+p seems like a highly helpful one,"

he commented.

"Wors.h.i.+p?" Michla shook his head. "n.o.body's that superst.i.tious any more, Derek. We know he was only a man like you or me--and sometimes I think he was always a little insane. By the way, I'm planning to plow the other field. Mind if I move your s.h.i.+p?"

The s.h.i.+p's controls were locked and there was nothing the man could do to hurt it, Derek decided. He'd have to see about moving it himself, if there was fuel enough to waste. Meantime, it might be a good idea to let Michla find that other people had secrets and that s.h.i.+ps didn't fly by waving wands at them.

"Go ahead."

He headed back to the house they had been given with Lari, the new wife or concubine of Ferad. Here and there, one of the villagers looked up and uttered one of the old greetings, which he returned. It was the only conversation he heard. They saluted each other just as formally, but with no further talk.

Ferad was waiting hungrily for breakfast and Lari was busy setting a stone table when Derek returned. She smiled happily at him. "Good morning, Derek.

Breakfast will be ready as soon as the fruit that G.o.d showed us arrives. If you want to shave first, Skora brought up one of G.o.d's personal razors."

He stared after Lari's figure as she went back to the kitchen. This lower-case G.o.d of theirs was getting to be a highly peculiar divinity. Derek went to the well-fitted bathroom in the rear, wondering where they got their water; each house had a tank on its roof, but there were no supply pipes. He found a razor that might have come from a pre-Collapse museum, lathered with a cake of their somewhat harsh soap, and tried it out. It worked well enough, once he got the hang of it.

Kayel was standing hi front of Siryl's door as Derek left the bathroom. He blushed, bit down on his pipe stem, and hurried toward the living quarters when he saw the captain.Derek knocked lightly on Siryl's door and threw it open. "Come on to breakfast!"

She opened sleepy eyes. Then she screamed and began pulling frantically at the covers, trying to conceal her nude -body as if her life depended on it. Her face went white, and her voice was a thick gasp. "How dare you-?"

"Somebody had to wake you up," he pointed out logically. He'd heard of women who considered clothes more than a matter of convenience, but the slit skirts had made him think that Terran women were normal about such things. "Why didn't you tell me you had such religious taboos?"

She jerked upright, grabbing for the slipping cover again. Her face crimsoned, whitened again, and hardened slowly. She looked sick as she forced herself to stand up before him and her hands were shaking as she reached for her clothes.

Her voice quavered. "I do not have taboos, Captain Derek! I-I simply resent your invasion of my privacy. I might have been doing- anything! How would you like it if I barged into your room like that?"

"Try it!" he suggested, grinning at her. "And don't count too much on my fear of failure." He watched in amus.e.m.e.nt as she finished her dressing in frenzied haste.

Then she brushed back her hair and was herself again. She smiled with forced amus.e.m.e.nt of her own. "Maybe I will, Captain. That overdose of antidepres-sant I gave you won't last forever."

He prowled and turned toward the living quarters. It was a fine crew he had left! He'd heard once that since the Collapse all men were neurotic in some way, while psychiatry had turned from a science to a farc'e. They bore out the theory. Kayel had an Oedipus complex, Ferad had turned to gluttony and hidden a good brain to avoid responsibility, and Siryl walled herself in with scorn for all men because she couldn't be one! Maybe their whole civilization was at fault. The people of the village had seemed as relaxed as if they'd just finished a course in electro-leucotomy that somehow left them with no loss of volition.

He found a seat at the table and watched Siryl slide in beside Kayel, who tried to hide his excitement at the favor behind a labored puffing at his pipe. Skora had joined them and was seated near Ferad. He had been explaining something about one of the students at the school having trouble with something G.o.d had revealed to him. Now the old mail smiled and reached toward a bowl of fruit in the center of the table.

"I've never thought of eating fruit, but I decided to try it," he said. "I hope it's good. When I found from G.o.d that most of the worlds like more than simple cereals for breakfast, I tried to find the type of fruit that was best."

Derek began peeling one of the big fruits, wondering how much of that he was supposed to believe. The marel-fruit grew only on Feneris, where its export was the chief industry. He tasted the aromatic sweetness, surprised to find it fresh and fully ripe.

"It must be at least a hundred thousand light-years to Feneris," he suggested, trying to keep his voice casual.

Skora nibbled carefully. A smile of pleasure ap-. peared on his lips and he fell to busily. "Good. Excellent. We'll have to adopt this. Feneris? It's farther than that. But the fruit grew on many worlds before the sun blasting, and still grows on a few in this sector. We found from G.o.d where to get it and sent one of the boys who needed the exercise."

"Then you have s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+ps!" Derek's fruit fell to his lap as he came to his feet, his hands gripping the edge of the table. If it came from another planet of this system, it might not mean they had faster-than-light travel, but still ...

Skora shrugged apologetically. "I'm afraid not, Derek. Vanir is a simpleworld. We have only our G.o.d and his power. The work of building s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+ps has always seemed too great for its reward. You'll find us quite primitive from your views, I'm sure."

"But-"

Siryl cut in, using Universal. "Stop it, Derek! Don't violate any verbal taboos here, if you want to get out alive!"

"But he knew the distance to Feneris and about other planets!"

"Folk songs and sagas!" She switched back to Cla.s.sic, apologizing to Skora.

Derek let it drop, but he wasn't satisfied. The exotic fruit grew only in a saturated atmosphere, which this planet didn't have. This might not be a colony of the enemy or have its own s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+ps, but that was no proof that s.h.i.+ps couldn't stop here-enemy s.h.i.+ps.

With his luck, anything odd would almost certainly prove to be dangerous. He chewed on his thoughts bitterly, along with the pancakes Lari brought them.

This G.o.d of theirs might even be one of the enemy, using some strange technology to create near miracles that the villagers could only believe were magic. In that case, word of their capture must be winging back to the enemy planets. It would be only a matter of time before one of the squat, black s.h.i.+ps landed here!

Derek got up abruptly, making hasty excuses and signaling for Kayel to follow.

This was no time to waste on speculation. The s.h.i.+p was their only means of escape, and it had to be put in some kind of operating condition. .

Siryl followed them as Derek voiced his suspicions to Kayel. The little man's eyes bulged and his face turned ashen as the captain poured out his doubts.

The psychologist snorted in disgust.

"Stop exercising your persecution complex!" she snapped. She shook her head, putting on her superior smile of tolerance. "You men! A few things you can't understand and probably some changes in the language we haven't caught yet, and you picture bogy-men under every rock! There isn't a trace of inferiority feeling here, as there would be if they'd run into a superior culture!"

Ahead of them lay the s.h.i.+p, and Derek saw a figure standing beside it. He broke into a faster walk, until he recognized it as Michla. The man waved at them and went back to whatever he was doing. As they came nearer, Derek saw that he was running his fingers over a large, odd-shaped stone plate with more of the curlicues on it.

"Incantations on a charm. He's probably sure the s.h.i.+p is a form of life that can be commanded with the right spell," Siryl said with satisfaction.

Michla pulled the disk to him, holding it against his chest with one hand. The other hand went out to touch the side of the s.h.i.+p.

As he lifted his arm, the twenty thousand tons of the Sepelora lifted a foot off the ground and began moving steadily forward beside him. He carried it along easily, heading toward a section of wasteland half a mile away.

4.

By the time they reached the Sepelora, Michla had picked up his strange plow and was busy at the far end of the field. Derek fumbled his way into the s.h.i.+p and began switching on the strain gauges while Kayel watched. There was no evidence of harm.

"Antigravity!" The physicist's voice was an awed whisper. "I always thought it was impossible with less than tons of equipment! And generated in the whole of the s.h.i.+p at once!"

Derek swung to face Siryl, but she was recovering and there was no humility in her. "Hypnotism, you mean! They must have worked on us while we slept and made us think the s.h.i.+p was in the other field, when it was here all along. We saw it there, and saw it being moved, by posthypnotic suggestion. Lots of primitives have some knowledge of hypnotism."

"Make it magic and I'll buy it," Derek told her. "That's a good explanation for what you can't understand, too."She started to say something and then checked it. Finally she turned toward the airlock. "All right. Let them fool you. I'm going to go back to Lari.

Primitive women are always easier to handle than their men. They're less organized."

She went out and through the fields, carefully avoiding the sight of the depression where the Sepelora had first lain. Derek and Kayel fell to work on the ruined s.p.a.ce-denial generators and what stores were left to them.

By all standard methods, it was hopeless. Yet Kayel began sketching and checking among the small power tools. He seemed to gather momentum, now pa.s.sing orders to Derek with a certainty that he showed only when working in his own field. "It won't be good," he admitted. "I'm having to compromise. But I think we may be able to combine enough of some of the new theories with the first methods ever used. We won't make better than fifteen light-years an hour, but it should get us to one of the border planets."

It was meaningless to Derek. But if they could leave, he was willing to try it. They worked on, grinding and shaping by methods that had been lost from practice for over a century. Some of the work would be trial and error, with no chance to estimate the time it would take. But it helped to take their minds off the primitives who could handle forces that civilized science couldn't touch.

Ferad came out finally to call them in to dinner. It was already growing dark, and there was a fine rain falling. Derek stared up through it. He had looked out fifteen minutes before and had seen no clouds in the sky. There still were none he could see, but the water dropped at an. increasing rate as they moved out of the wasteland onto the cultivated fields. In the village, the covers of the water tanks were off. Derek wasn't surprised to see that the rain poured down more heavily over the tanks.

Apparently Siryl had been checking on the ram with Lari. As they entered the house the native girl was running busily from the kitchen to the table, but she was keeping up a steady fire of conversation.

"Of course Skora brings the water at night. It's better after all the work in the fields is done," she explained. "Though sometimes there's a light fall of natural rain in the daytime. That makes us all feel good. When we first started, we had to import all our water. And now we have two small oceans. Of course, G.o.d told us the planet had eight big seas before the sun exploded. I was asking Skora about it, and he says some of the worlds are all covered with water-not even a little bit of land . . ."

Siryl's face showed that she had learned nothing-or at least nothing that she wanted to know.

Lari came hurrying back, carrying a huge metal pot of stew to the table. She held it at arm's length easily, and Derek noticed one of the amulets in her hand-this time a small one with only a few simple marks on it. He pointed. "What's that, Lari?"

"A lifting tool". G.o.d showed us how to make all kinds of tools. There's one that eats away the rock, and one that plows the ground-you saw that, didn't you? Skora bakes them. They make G.o.d work for us. Come on, dinner's ready."

Derek picked up the little piece and turned it over. It was a twisted lump of clay, baked hard, with a series of marks on the top. It looked as if no design existed, yet there was a certain flow to the lines. He reached out for the kettle, fingering the amulet. If the kettle weighed less because of it, he couldn't feel the difference. Nor could he find any sign of a switch buried on the surf ace of the gadget.

If there were some kind of broadcast power here, and these things were receivers tuned to convert it into special functions ...

He pocketed it while Lari's back was turned. There might be some penalty for the theft of one, but he had to risk it.The next day when they reached the s.h.i.+p Kayel took it to pieces bit by bit.

Lari had missed it, but had only shrugged and pulled another out of a drawer.

The piece of clay grew smaller and smaller under the grinder as Kayel worked on it. At last it was just a nub that he had to hold with pliers. Then even that was gone. On the floor was a pile of dust, with no trace of metal or foreign element in it. The two men stared at it sickly and then dropped the matter quickly as they turned back to the labor of rebuilding the damaged s.p.a.ce-denial generators.