Into the Slave Nebula (14 page)

At first Braithwin merely stood by, reflecting sourly that Talibrand’s men didn’t stand a chance. All it would take to decide the outcome of this was time. With nineteen families ranged against one, the result was foregone, which must be why Jan Talibrand had resolved to cut short—

Braithwin’s thought slewed away at right angles, and he gazed wildly about him. Only a moment ago Horn had told of his own resolution, to deal personally with Talibrand, and now his prey was out in the open he had his chance.

“The fool!” Braithwin exclaimed. “If he’s risking his neck I’ll have him flayed, I’ll …! Oh, the
fool!”

He dragged his sword from its sheath and headed incontinently for the spot at which, as was obvious from the dense cluster of Talibrand’s retainers all around it, Jan Talibrand had decided to make his stand, on the lawn before the wide main doors.

“Horn!” Braithwin shouted. “Have you seen Horn?” And, as though inadvertently, when he discovered he
was addressing a Talibrand man, his sword parted head from neck. “Horn! The blue man—have you seen him?” Once more, a Talibrand man, and the sword clicked and jiggled against another like it and sank deep into yielding muscle. “Horn! I’m looking for—”

Talibrand
.

In pure astonishment Braithwin realized that the last man he had cut down had fallen to reveal the long face, the long limbs and the long sword dripping gore of the fratricide Jan Talibrand himself. All else was on the instant forgotten. His mind filling with fury, he leapt forward shouting a cry he had had from his father’s father’s father and never thought to use in actual conflict.

“A Braithwin! A
Bra-a-ai-thwi-i-i-in!”

And on the final beat of the rhythmical shout he knocked aside one of his own retainers to leave a clear field of sweep for the blade that cut through Talibrand’s sword-arm and through his rib cage and through his shoulder blade and his spine and last of all through his foul black heart.

Disbelieving, Braithwin stared at what he had done, letting go his hilt and watching it describe a curious irregular curve as Talibrand’s weight bore it to the ground. Retainers crowded around, plying him with congratulations, but he remembered why he had come here originally and barked harsh questions.

“Horn! Where is he? Have you seen him?”

None of them knew.

T
HE HOUSE
was blazing fiercely now, its long timber-strutted roof flaming along half its total length, and smoke was welling even from the double doors of the great hall which had been furthest from the fire. By the light of the flames Braithwin set off on a round of the area, demanding of everyone he met what could have happened to Horn. He had made nearly the full circuit of the house before anyone gave him a positive answer: a boy holding one hand to his brow to prevent blood from a cut scalp running into his eyes.

“Why, yes, I did see the blue man—there near the door of the great hall a while ago! And, Councillor, is it true that you personally—?”

But Braithwin was gone, furiously.

Back at his starting-point, he folded his arms on his chest and scowled. Well, that seemed pretty conclusive! If he had indeed been up here, and yet only one person had had a chance to see and remember him, that meant he hadn’t lasted very long. Small wonder. Granted he was a cut or two above the average Earthman, he still oughtn’t to have matched himself with men of Creew ’n Dith. Probably when the funeral parties were clearing up they’d run across his blue body, unique among the rest of the dead, and—

A shout went up among those around him, and hands pointed towards the house. Braithwin whirled. From the smoke-belching double doorway, a dark figure was staggering with a limp white burden in his arms. Men rushed from every side to help, for he was half suffocating with the smoke and his eyes were almost blinded by tears.

“Careful there!” he croaked as he gave up the girl he had brought out. “She’s the wife of a very great man.…”

“Councillor Braithwin had already informed me,” Horn explained in husky tones, “that no retainer on Creew ’n Dith would turn against his master in time of trouble. So it could hardly have been one of the staff who set the fire. That left one likely candidate among those inside the house.”

“Moda Talibrand,” Braithwin grunted.

“Right. I knew she hated her brother-in-law—and with good reason, of course, though she only had her suspicions to go by. So I went down and made some inquiries of the women and children who’d been given safe-conduct from the house. She wasn’t there. And when someone realized that she’d been with them when they assembled to make their dash for safety in the great hall, and wasn’t among them now, there was only one possible conclusion: Jan Talibrand had kept her back to burn alive in the fire she herself had started. And there she was, lying where Talibrand had thrown her under a serving-table. So I brought her out.”

He raised his beer-mug and poured the contents down his throat. He was acquiring the taste for the stuff, he decided, and held the mug out for more.

Around the table in Braithwin’s great hall, the surviving councillors nodded approval. They had rested after the battle, and before resuming their interrupted business they were refreshing themselves with food and drink.

“At the risk of pre-empting the official verdict,” Braithwin commented gruffly, “I can’t help feeling the planet is a better place without someone who could revenge himself that way upon a helpless woman … hrr’hm!”

Clearing his throat, he noisily rustled his stack of papers together.

“For the benefit of our distinguished visitor Derry Horn, I propose to transact a small part of our next business in Anglic. First: a motion. It is resolved that no more so-called ‘androids’ be permitted passage through Creewndithian ports, and henceforth it shall be an offense for any Creewndithian citizen to engage in traffic in them. Aye?”

Every hand was raised.

“Second: a motion. It is resolved that Derry Horn, a citizen of the planet Earth, be granted the honorary citizenship of Creew ’n Dith. Aye?”

Again, every hand went up.

“Third: an entry of record. Jan Talibrand of the house of Talibrand formerly of this council did for causes by this council in their several persons witnessed forfeit his right and the right of his descendants to the rank of hereditary councillor. Aye?”

And a third time agreement.

“Good,” said Braithwin, and sat back. “Well, there’s no need to detain you further, Mr. Horn—you’ll hardly be interested even with your new honorary status as a Creewndithian citizen in the rather elaborate procedure of nominating Talibrand’s successor … anyhow, it’s not legal for anyone but councillors to be present! I’ll arrange for your citizenship papers to be prepared at once, and once you have them you can depart for Earth whenever you wish. Though there is, of course, one other small problem we’ve been considering—the fact that your skin is at present blue.”

Horn shrugged. “People are going to have to get used, even on Earth, to the fact that blue skins don’t label artificial men that can be treated as simple property.”

“Yes, but even so I think you’d be the first to grant that
getting rid of the dye would help the process of adjustment. Now it’s been suggested, and we agree, that as a—hah!—a near-friend of a citizen of the galaxy you might find another of that distinguished company willing to assist you. I’ve already sent a message to Gayk on Vernier, offering what funds may be required to develop an antidote to the android blue.”

He fumbled in his belt-pouch. “And, speaking of citizens of the galazy … ah, here we are.” He withdrew the grey wallet that had formerly belonged to Lars Talibrand. “I think there is no one in whose hands we could more aptly leave this relic which was discovered in the ashes of Talibrand Hall?” He made it a question, and the councillors answered with vigorous nods.

Accepting the certificate, Horn rose. He had intended to speak, to utter formal thanks, but he was too overcome to do more than bow his head and turn towards the door of Braithwin’s study. He had left the hall, and closed the door of the smaller room behind them, before he realized that the other person present, whom from the corner of his eye he had taken for a mere serving-wench, was Moda Talibrand.

She had put off her mourning garb and resumed the plain white Creewndithian gown. Her face was full of a strange mixture of sorrow and happiness.

There was a long silence. When at last she spoke, it was in a tone which suggested she was resuming a conversation that had been briefly interrupted.

“You know, I have two reasons for being glad that Lars’s work has been completed after all. The first is obvious—that anything he so prized as to risk his life was worth doing and I couldn’t help but want to see it done, too. But the second reason is hardly clear even to me. Perhaps I can put it like this.

“I thought there could only be one man like my Lars in the whole galaxy, and once I’d lost him I could have
no further reason for wanting to live. But I was wrong. There are other men like him. I’ve met one of them, and where there are two there must be many, many more.”

She reached out impulsively and seized his hand. He bowed his head. A lump rose in his throat. He was thinking of a red-haired man lying dead with a knife in his chest on the floor of a room on Earth.

The word went out.…

They told Shembo that no more androids would be shipped through Creew ’n Dith, and that his livelihood was gone. He beamed with a flash of teeth and refrained from mentioning that his next inbound cargo was already on order: furs, cured hides, and rough-cut natural gemstones too random for machines to duplicate.

All he said was, “Must be trade!”

They told Dize the same, and he brushed the information aside; he was too busy studying up for the examination which would make him master of his own ship instead of a junor officer to Larrow. It had amused his sons greatly to find their father going back to school.

Also the word came to a place where battered ancient starships put down on a hard salt-pan beside a sluggish sea, and the wind seemed to turn chillier with its coming. But on Arthworld, and Vernier, and Lygos, and many others where for decades no mother had known when she might have to weep for the loss of a child stolen by kidnappers, it was more as if the sun had broken through a cloud.

It came to Earth, and Derry Horn senior spoke frowningly to his father, saying, “That whippersnapper of a son of mine seems to have kicked up quite a ruckus out yonder!”

“Wrecked our export balances, for one thing!” Grandfather Horn grunted, studying reports which said that Arthworld and Vernier had followed the lead of Creew ’n
Dith in banning the android trade, and that Lygos was expected to join them shortly.

Then both together lifted their eyes worriedly to look at the butler, Rowl, and wondered:
does he know?

The word traveled fastest of all, of course, among the androids; it had already passed along the trade routes before the ban began to interfere with the traffic.

Androids were used to conversing through a third party; in one such conversation which followed the arrival of the news on Earth the intermediary was the driver of a garbage wagon that served the hotel where Lars Talibrand had died, who bunked in the same android barracks as Berl of the wreck-salvage squad.

From Berl to Dordy the driver carried the opening remarks: “What do you know?
I
never thought that soft-looking boy would make out! Say, what are you going to do when they get the message down here and have to repeal the regulations that keep us on the hook? First off,
I’m
going to—”

There followed a list of wild fantasies, most of which would have called for androids to be freed from the laws of nature as well as the laws of man to make them possible. When they were relayed to Dordy he smiled, and sent back his answer crisp, concise and as the fruit of much quiet thought.

“Start a campaign to have Derry Horn made a citizen of the galaxy!”

A Maze of Stars

A Planet of Your Own

Age of Miracles

Bedlam Planet

Born Under Mars

Castaways’ World

Catch a Falling Star

Children of the Thunder

Double, Double

Enigma from Tantalus

Galactic Storm

Give Warning to the World

I Speak for Earth

Into the Slave Nebula

Manshape

Meeting at Infinity

More Things in Heaven

Muddle Earth

Players at the Game of People

Polymath

Quicksand

Sanctuary in the Sky

Stand on Zanzibar

Telepathist

The Atlantic Abomination

The (Compleat) Traveler in Black

The Altar on Asconel

The Avengers of Carrig

The Brink

The Crucible of Time

The Dramaturges of Yan

The Dreaming Earth

The Gaudy Shadows

The Infinitive of Go

The Jagged Orbit

The Ladder in the Sky

The Long Result

The Martian Sphinx

The Productions of Time

The Psionic Menace

The Repairmen of Cyclops

The Rites of Ohe

The Sheep Look Up

The Shift key

The Shockwave Riders

The Skynappers

The Space-Time Juggler

The Squares of the City

The Stardroppers

The Stone That Never Came Down

The Super Barbarians

The Tides of Time

The World Swappers

The Wrong End of Time

Threshold of Eternity

Times Without Number

Timescoop

To Conquer Chaos

Total Eclipse

Web of Everywhere