John Rackham (10 page)

"You go too fast. We have not yet
decided whether we will fight or not."

"You
will!" Captain Slatt put in, crisp and positive. "No matter what you
may decide here and now, one thing is absolutely certain. The big fleet will
come. Ten times as many ships as you have seen and each one ten times as big as
ours. Nor will they be as gentle as we were, not once they know you have
already broken us. You'll fight—or be smashed flat!"

Bragan
watched the byplay critically. Slatt was making a good impression by being calm
and simple. They believed him. Mordin took a moment to confer again, then
brought his bleak gaze back to Slatt.

"You—"
he said, "sound like a man of sense. What of it? Can the big ships be
beaten, the big weapons resisted?"

"Who knows? They are big, and powerful.
But nothing is too big to be defeated, somehow. It's possible."

"You know all that
Zorgan knows?"

"I
don't, no. I am only the captain of one ship. But if that ship can be carefully
salvaged there is in it a machine which carries information, all the working
information on Zorgan methods and weapons. A memory machine."

"I
know of those things," Mordin nodded. "We have them, too."

The
hell you do!
Bragan
thought, but kept the astonishment from showing. Instead he shouted his way
back into the debate violently.

"You're
all wasting breath on fool's talk. You will never stop the big ships!"

"Never is a long time," Mordin growled.
"What does
he
dor

"The
Supreme Executive is the one who decides how a battle is to be fought, who has
special training and skill in ways to outwit an enemy, and hit him to the best
advantage," Slatt replied. "We call it strategy. It calls for
cunning and a certain kind of devious thinking."

"Hmml"
Mordin sniffed, scratched his jaw, then directed a hard stare at Bragan.
"It seems we are split on you.
I
make you one more offer,
a
chance
to decide. Which is it to be, for Zorgan—or Scarta?"

Bragan
raked him with scorn, then cast his gaze over the rest, his recent command,
what was left of it. It needed no skill to read those faces. Not one of them
would meet his eyes. He was alone. He turned back to Mordin arrogantly.
"Get it over with, old man. All it means is that I shall die a little
sooner than you. What's the difference? You can't winl"

Mordin's
face set like granite. He motioned to two or three men by Bragan's feet.
"Take him. Strip him. Put him in the stockade. And leave him. Quickly,
there is much to do."

They dropped him down with a looped rope
under his arms, and whipped it away as soon as his feet touched the bottom. And
as soon as he was alone he made a point of inspecting his prison thoroughly.
That was habit and thoroughness. Had there been any weakness he would have
found it. But there was none, and he wasn't surprised.
Efficiency in all things,
he thought, as he squatted in
a
comer away from the high sun. All to himself he had a space that was a
perfect square fifty feet a side, with solid substantial walls ten feet high.
And all of it was stone and rubble aggregate fuzed to glass-smooth hardness.
There was no door, no break in that surface at all. There was no point in even
beginning to think about contriving a cunning way out, not in view of the fact
that he had only his skin to work with.

He
spent a moment or two wondering wryly how the famous escapologists of history
would have set about bursting out of a situation like this. And then a few more
moments reviling the clown who had penned the immortal words, "Stone walls
do not
a
prison makel" These did, absolutely. The
sun caught up on him, and he moved, settled, and set away to think in earnest,
weighing his chances as dispassionately and critically as he could. His only
card was
a
weak one, almost negligible, and he had to
rely on someone else to play it for him at that. He was a master strategist,
and they needed him. He was worth a dozen weapons. If they could appreciate that,
he had
a
chance. If they came to realize his value,
they would try to break him down. That was all he had to hope on. It wasn't
much. How do you convey the idea, the value, of strategy, to a people with no
experience of war? He pondered it, shifted as the glass-hard floor made his
bones ache, and assessed his chances as slim.

It
was an either-or choice that had little joy in it. Either they did want his
special talents, in which case they would try to break him down by leaving him
here until he called for mercy. And he couldn't be too quick on that or they
would suspect his sincerity.

Or
they would decide they didn't need him at all, and just leave him to die. And
he had no way of knowing which it was. No way at all.

In all, they left him there
three whole days and nights.

VI

B
y
the morning
of
the fourth day he was losing his grip on reality, and insidious persuasion from
somewhere deep down told him it didn't matter. To keep still was the only way
to keep clear of agony. Breathe in little sips. Don't think. That touch of warm
light on his face was just another land of pain, different from the gnawing
cold, but pain just the same. Every joint and bump on him had ached and gone beyond
aching into a boneless mush of dull distress that seemed remote. Tiny breaths
rustled through the dusty caverns of his nose and throat, but he—the real
person—kept slipping away into a forbidden land, a lovely garden where all was
cool, where bountiful trees bent down under their load of luscious fruits, and
chuckling fountains sprayed sparkling cascades of clear wine. Something held
him just short of that heaven, some thin thread that he ought to snap, and
leave the dreadful reality back there.

Then
agony took shape and was viciously real, was a hurtful grip on his arm, shaking
him, shattering the blissful vision into fragments, pulling him back into
horror. He screwed at rusty eyelids, to squint and peer and struggle for focus
against the harsh sun. He saw Ryth bending over him. He tried to say "Go
away!" but it came out no more than a scrape that hurt his throat, just a
rattle. She stooped closer.

"I've come to take you
away with me. Do you hear?"

"Uh?" He racked
his deadened wits for meaning.

"You are to come away
with me. The Council has agreed."'

"Uh? Wha'? Go way-" "That's
right. With me."

She
blurred away out of focus, then
a
drench
of cold water struck and washed over his head and face. He felt it soaking into
his pores, loosening the scabs on his hps. He sucked greedily at the few drops
that ran down into his mouth, struggled to sit up. She sluiced him with another
dose and now he could see that she held
a
wooden
bucket, swinging it in one hand.

"There's more," she said. "As
much as you want," and she put the bucket down by his arm. "Be
careful now. Not too much!"

He
fought his way up to his knees on bones and sinews that screeched protest,
plunged his head and face into the bucket and almost drowned in his need to
drink. She grabbed his hair and hauled him back and out by main force, to let
him choke and cough a while, then she repeated her warning, "Not too much
at once. Take your time!"

He nodded blearily, struggled to the bucket
again and ducked in. But this time his wits were better. He drank, and
breathed, and drank again, and the water was liquid life, soaking through him,
clarifying his brain. It gave him renewed capacity to feel his aching agony
and the gnawing emptiness in his belly, but it brought caution too. He steeled
himself to be on guard.

"All
right," he mumbled at last, swiping the back of his hand across four days
of bristle and dirt. "What do you want from me? What's this for?"

"Did you think we would leave you to
die?"

"Why not? I have nothing for you, now or
ever."

She
came to crouch down by him, one knee on the ground by his hand, to stare at him
and shake her head. "You're
a
strange
man, not like the rest. They, at least, are willing to help themselves."

"So
they've gone over to your side? Sold themselves for a futile hope. That's what
you mean, isn't it?"

"On
the world you come from, do events happen by themselves? Does your food thrust
itself into your mouth? Do garments grow on you, or on trees? Do your homes
just happen?"

"Do you take me for a child?"

"You are acting like a child! On Scarta
we have a way. We say this. No man lives idle. I have heard you talk and
I
think this may be strange to you, because you speak of machines which do
a man's work. But think now as I tell you. There is food and drink, shelter and
clothing. For you. As much as you could ever need. If you want it. But you must
earn it. You must work for it!"

He
turned his face away, feeling the muscles of his neck creak as he did it.
"You know my answer to that, Ryth. You were there. You heard. I will have
nothing whatever to do with any harebrained scheme to try and stop Zorgan. It's
futile. The rest of the men can think and do as they like. You've told them to
think for themselves, and this is the way they are doing it. The fools! They don't
know the score the way I do. I know just how useless it is to try to do
anything to stop that technique, that capability. They had their chance to
listen to me, and I can't do anything to stop them now from making fools of
themselves, and of you. But I won't help."

She reached for his stubbly chin and pulled
his head around. "We have learned much since you came here. On Scarta we
say, from eveiything that may happen, learn
a
lesson. We have learned a new word. Loyalty. It means,
1
think, to have trust and faith in an idea, to make it more important
than life, even. Yes?"

He met her gray gaze with cold suspicion,
then made
a
twisted grin that hurt his face. "You
don't know, do you? Loyalty has nothing to do with it. Oh yes, it's a word, and
you have the meaning right enough. But that's all it is,
a
word. I go by facts. Like, for instance, do you believe that in so many
hours from now it will be dark? Would you try to evade or defeat that? Or think
of a crawling beede. Does he get together with his fellows and say, come let us
join together into a great force and throw off this giant heel that is about
to come down and crush us?"

"The Scartans are not
beedesl"

"All
right. If you don't like that picture, try this." The water, on his vacant
stomach and body-racked aches, made Bragan feel slightly lightheaded, but he
managed to keep his voice even and measured. "Count the number of grains
in
a
farmer's field. For all their huge numbers,
do they resist when the farmer comes with his blade and cuts them all down?
Would it matter to him if they did? Does he care, as he beats and grinds them
into flour and then into bread?"

Now
she looked troubled and uncertain. "Is Zorgan so great as that?"

"And more! You have no
chance at all!"

"So
you choose to die? On Scarta we say, while I live,
I
choose!"

"We
have a similar saying: While there's life, there's hope. That is just more
words. I have no hope, and little choice.
I
can die now, or later;"

"You can live!"

"There's a quality to
living. It has to have some point."

She slid down to squat on the stone floor
beside him, and sighed.
"I
think I understand you, a
little. You are convinced that to resist Zorgan is hopeless. I had hoped your
mind would change, but I can see now that it won't. But there is another
choice. Will you listen?"