Conquest Over Time Part 3

When he awoke this time the pain had moved over to the side of his neck. There was no light at all and he lay wearily for a long while in the blackness. He had no idea how much time had pa.s.sed. He could tell from the brick wet below him that he was still in the sewer, or at least some other part of it, and, considering the last turn of the conversation, he thought he could call himself lucky to be alive.

But as his strength returned so did his anger. He began to struggle with his bonds. There was still the problem of the contract. He regarded that bitterly. He could just possibly die down here, but his main worry was still the contract. Alls.p.a.ce would be proud of him--but Alls.p.a.ce might never know.

He did nothing with the bonds, which he discovered unhappily were raw leather thongs. Eventually he saw a light coming down the corridor. He saw with a thrill of real pleasure that it was the girl. The young man was tagging along behind her but the big man was absent. The girl knelt down by him and regarded him quizically.

"Do you possess pain?"

"Maiden, I possess and possess unto the limits of capacity."

"My thought is sorrow. But this pa.s.ses. Consider: your blood remains wet."

Travis caught her meaning. He swore feebly.

"It was very nearly let dry," the girl said. "But solutions conjoined.

It was noted at the last, even as the blade descended, that such friends as yours could no doubt barter for Mertian coin, untraceable, thus restoring your value."

"Clever, clever. Oh, clever," Travis said drily.

To his surprise, the girl blushed.

"Overgracious. Overkind. Speed thanks awry of this windy head, aim at yon Lappy"--she indicated the boy who stood smiling shyly behind her--"it was he who thought you alive, he my brother."

"Ah," Travis said. "Well, bless you, boy." He nodded at the boy, who very nearly collapsed with embarra.s.sment. Travis wondered about this 'brother' bit. Brother in crime? The Langkit did not clarify. But the girl turned back on him a smile as glowing as a tiny nova. He gazed cheerfully back.

"Tude and the others sit now composing your note. A matter of weight, confounded in darkness." She lowered her eyes becomingly. "Few of us,"

she apologized, "have facility in letters."

"A ransom note," Travis growled. "Great G.o.ds and Little--Tude? Who is Tude?"

"The large man who, admittedly hastening before the horse, did plant pain in your head."

"Ah," Travis said, smiling grimly. "We shall presently plow his field--"

"Ho!" the girl cried, agitated. "Speak not in darkness. Tude extends both north and south, a man of dimension as well as choler. He boasts Fors in the tenth in good aspect to Bonken, giving prowess at combat, and Lyndal in the fourth bespeaks a fair ending. Avoid, odd man, foreordained disaster."

In his urge to say a great many things Travis stammered. The girl laid a cool grimy hand lightly on his arm and tried to soothe him.

"With pa.s.sivity and endurance. The night shall see you free. Tude comes in close moment with the note. Quarrel not at the price, sign, and there will be a conclusion to the matter. We are not retrograde here. As we set our tongues, so lie our deeds."

"Yes, well, all right," Travis grumbled. "But there will come--all right all right. My name shall be inscribed, let your note contain what it will. But I would have speed. There are matters of gravity lying heavily ahead."

The girl c.o.c.ked her head oddly to one side.

"You sit on points. A rare thing. Lies your horoscope in such confusion that you know not the drift of the coming hours?"

Travis blinked.

"Horoscope?" he said.

"Surely," the girl said, "the astrologers of your planet did preach warning to you of the danger of this day, and whether, in the motions of your system, lay success or failure. Or is it a question of varying interpretations? Did one say you good while the other--"

Travis grinned broadly. Then he sobered. It would quite logically follow that these people, primitive as they were, might not be able to conceive of a land where astrology was not Lord over all. A human trait. But he saw dangerous ground ahead. He began very cautiously and diplomatically to explain himself, saying that while astrology was practiced among his own people, it had not yet become as exact an art as it was on Mert, and only a few had as yet learned to trust it.

The effect on the girl was startling. She seemed for a moment actually terrified when it was finally made clear to her. She abruptly retreated into a corner with her brother and mumbled low frantic sounds. Travis grinned to himself but kept his face stoically calm.

But now the girl was out in the light and he could examine her clearly for the first time, and he forgot about astrology entirely.

She was probably in her early twenties. She was dirtier than a well-digger's shoes. She ran with a pack of cutthroats and thieves in what was undoubtedly the lowest possible level of Mertian society. But there was something about her, something Travis responded to very strongly, which he could not define. Possibly something about the set of her hair, which was dark and very long, or perhaps in the mouth--yes the mouth, now observe the mouth--and also maybe in the figure.... But he could not puzzle it out. A girl from the gutter.

But--perhaps that was it, there seemed to be no gutter about her.

There was real grace in her movements, a definite style in the way she held her head, something gentle and very fine.

Now watch that, Travis boy, he told himself sharply, watch that. A psychological thing, certainly. She probably reminds you of a long forgotten view of your mother.

The girl arose and came back, followed this time by the young man. She had become suddenly and intensely interested in his world--she had apparently taken it for granted that it was exactly like hers, only with s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+ps--and Travis obliged her by giving a brief sketch of selected subjects: speeds, wonders, what women wore, and so on.

Gradually he worked the conversation back around to her, and she began to tell him about herself.

Her name was, euphonically, Navel. This was not particularly startling to Travis. Navel is a pretty word and the people of Mert had chosen another, uglier sound for use when they meant 'belly b.u.t.ton,' which was their right. Travis accepted it, and then listened to her story.

She had not always been a criminal, run with the sewer packs. She had come, as a matter of proud record, from an extremely well-to-do family which featured two Senators, one Horary Astrologer, and a mercantile tyc.o.o.n--which accounted, Travis thought, for her air of breeding. The great tragedy of her life, however, the thing that had brought her to her present pa.s.s, was her abysmally foul horoscope. She had not been a planned baby. Her parents felt great guilt about it, but the deed was done and there was no help for it. She had been born with Huck retrograde in the tenth house, opposing Fors retrograde in the fourth, and so on, and so on, so that even the most amateur astrologer could see right at her birth that she was born for no good, destined for some shameful end.

She told about it with an air of resigned cheerfulness, saying that after all her parents had really done more than could be expected of them. Both with her and her similarly accidental brother Lappy--now _there_, Travis thought, was a careless couple--whose horoscope, she said dolefully, was even worse than her own. The parents had sent her off to school up through the first few years, and had given her a handsome dowry when they disowned her, and they did the same with Lappy a few years later.

But Navel held no bitterness. She was a girl born inevitably for trouble--her horoscope forecast that she would be a shame to her parents, would spend much of her life in obscure, dangerous places, and would reflect no credit on anyone who befriended her. So, for a child like this, what reasonable citizen would waste time and money and love, when it was certain beforehand that the child grown up would be as likely as not to end up a murderess? No, the schools were reserved for the children of promise, as were the jobs and the parties and the respect later on. The only logical course, the habitual custom, was for the parents to disown their evilly aspected children, hoping only that such tragedies as lay in the future would not be too severe, and at least would not be connected with the family name.

And Navel was not bitter. But there was only one place for her, following her exile from her parents' home. A career in business was of course impossible. Prospective employers took one look at your horoscope and--zoom, the door. The only work she could find was menial in the extreme--dish-was.h.i.+ng, street cleaning, and so on. So she turned, and Lappy turned, as thousands of their ill-starred kind had turned before them for generations, to the wild gangs of the sewers.

And it was not nearly so bad as it might have seemed. The sewer gangs were composed of thousands of people just like herself, homeless, cast out, and they came from all levels of society to found a society of their own. They offered each other what none of them could have found anywhere else on Mert: appreciation, companions.h.i.+p, and even if life in the sewers was filthy, it was also tolerable, and many even married and had children--the luckiest of whom quickly disowned their parents and were adopted by wealthy families.

But the thing which impressed Travis most of all was that none of these people were bitter at their fate. Navel could not recall ever hearing of any organized attempt at rebellion. Indeed, most of the sewer people believed more strongly in the astrology of Mert than did the business men on the outside. For each day every one of them could look at the dirt of himself, at the disease of his surroundings, and could see that the message of his horoscope was true: he was born to no good end. And since it had been drummed into these people from their earliest childhood that only the worst could be expected of them, they gave in, quite humanly, to the predictions, and went philosophically forth to live up to them. They watched the daily horoscopes intently for the Bad Days, realizing that what was bad for the normal people must be a field day for themselves, and they issued out of the sewers periodically on binges of robbery, kidnapping, and worse. In this way they lived up to the promise of their stars, fulfilled themselves, and also managed to eat. And few if any ever questioned the justice of their position.

Travis sat listening, stunned. For a long while the contract and how to get out of here and all the rest of it was forgotten. He sat watching the girl and her shy brother as they spoke self-consciously to him, and began to understand what they must be feeling. Travis was from outside the sewers, he had stayed at the grand hotel--his horoscope, whether he believed it or not, must be very fine. And so they did him unconscious homage, much in the manner of low caste Hindus speaking to a Bramin. It was unnerving.

Gradually the boy Lappy began to speak also, and Travis realized with surprise that the boy was in many ways remarkable. As Navel's brother--Navel, Travis gathered with a twinge of deep regret, was the big Tude's 'friend', and Tude was the leader of this particular gang--young Lappy had a restful position. He was kept out of most of the rough work end allowed to pursue what he shamelessly called his 'studies', and he guessed proudly that he must have stolen nearly every book in the Consul's library. His particular hobbies, it turned out, were math and physics. He had a startling command of both, and some of the questions he asked Travis were embarra.s.sing. But the boy was leaning forward, breathlessly drinking in the answers, when Tude came back.

The big man loomed over them suddenly on his quiet rag-bound feet, frightening the boy and causing the girl to flinch. He made a number of singularly impolite remarks, but Travis said nothing and bided his time. He regarded the big man with patient joy, considering with delight such bloodthirsty effects as judo could produce on this one--Fors and Bonken be d.a.m.ned--if they ever untied his hands.

Eventually, unable to get a rise out of him, the big man shoved a paper down before his nose and told him to sign it. He pulled out that wickedly clean knife and freed Travis' hand just enough for him to move his wrist. Hoping for the best, Travis signed. Tude chuckled, said something nastily to the girl, the girl said something chilling in return, and the big man cuffed her playfully on the shoulder. Then he lumbered away.

Travis sat glaring after him. The contract, the need to escape flooded back into his mind. The eclipse might be ending even now. Unico would already be here, probably one or two others as well. And this ransom business might take a week. He swore to himself. Pat Travis, the terror of the skies, held captive by a bunch of third rate musical comedy pirates while millions lay in wait in the city above. And oh my Lord, he thought, stricken, what will people say when they hear--he had to get out.

He glanced cautiously at the girl and the boy, who were gazing at him ingenuously. He saw instantly that the way, if there was a way, lay through them. But the plan had not yet formed when the boy leaned forward and spoke.

"I have an odd thing in my head," Lappy said bashfully, "that nevertheless radiates joy to my mind. In my reading I have seen things leap together from many books, forming a whole, and the whole is rare.

Can you, in your wisdom, confirm or deny what I have seen? It is this--"

He spoke a short series of sentences. Navel tried to shush him, embarra.s.sed, but he doggedly went on. And Travis, stricken, found himself suddenly paying close attention.