Ride the Star Winds (70 page)

“And what you have told us is the truth,” stated rather than asked Pastor Coffin.

“It is, sir,” said Ling.

“Objection!” shouted Grimes.

Coffin consulted with the two clerks then said, “John Grimes, it pleases us to hear your objection. Say your say.”

“Your Law Enforcer Ling is not a reliable witness, Pastor.”

“Indeed? How not so?”

“Law Enforcer Ling stated that on the night in question I sat down on the beach to enjoy a quiet smoke. That is correct. He also stated that Ms.
Kelly and Ms. Byrne, after they had finished their swim, also enjoyed a smoke. They did not. That was because they had brought no smoking materials with them.”

Ling was called to the pastor’s table, was engaged in a low-voiced conference with Coffin and the other two. Finally he stood aside.

The pastor said, “It is your word, John Grimes, against the word of my law enforcer . . . .”

“My word,” said Grimes hotly, “and the words of two of my officers.”

“There may,” admitted Coffin magnanimously, “be some confusion in Law Enforcer Ling’s memory. For this there is ample excuse. What he witnessed would have been enough to turn the mind of any man not of exceptionably strong and pious character. And Law Enforcer Ling was with me tonight, when you and the other accused were apprehended. I saw, with my own eyes, both you and the women Kelly and Byrne indulging in your filthy habit. The objection that you have raised is a mere quibble.”

Grimes subsided.
They can’t shoot us for smoking,
he thought.
Not even on this woody planet.

But for witchcraft?

“Call the second witness,” ordered Coffin.

“Job Gardiner,” called the clerk. “Job Gardiner. Stand forward!”

“My name is Job Gardiner,” said the man, who could almost have been twin brother to Matthew Ling. “I hold the rank of Chief Law Enforcer . . .”

He cleared his throat. “Pursuant to information received and to direct orders from Pastor Coffin, I, together with a party of law enforcers—among whom was Matthew Ling—made my way to Short Beach by the coast road. Pastor Coffin accompanied us, saying, and rightly, that this was a very serious matter and that he would have to exercise overall command of the operation. . . .”

And so it went on.

“ . . . it was obvious, to the pastor and myself, to all of us that the four accused were talking to the silkies and that the silkies were talking to them. And such things cannot be. Then the silkies returned to the sea, but before they did so they made bestial obeisance to the black-haired witch. The pastor ordered us to arrest the four blasphemous outworlders. We did so, and we smashed the Devil’s machine that they had brought with them.”

But the tapes should have survived, thought Grimes. The tapes, and their damning evidence. But would they be retrieved? Would they ever be played back?

“The court has heard the evidence,” said Coffin. “We all have heard the evidence. It is obvious that at least one of the accused, the black-haired woman, is a witch. It is probable that the man and the other two women are lesser witches, or acolytes. But we must be sure before we order our law to take its course. Chief Law Enforcer Gardiner, I order you to apply the acid test.”

“Law Enforcer Ling,” ordered Gardiner in his turn, “bring the acid.”

Coffin smiled bleakly at Grimes. “We have our methods, outworlder, of determining the guilt or otherwise of witches. The acid test is one of the more effective. An accused witch is required to drink a draught of acid. If he or she is uninjured, then obviously he or she is a witch and is dealt with accordingly. If he or she suffers harm, then he or she is possibly not a witch.”

“Heads I win, tails you lose,” said Grimes.

“You speak in riddles, Grimes. And nothing you say is of any consequence.”

Ling returned from wherever he had gone carrying a large bottle. He handed this to his superior, then went to stand behind Seiko, pulling her head back with one hand, forcing her mouth open with the other. Gardiner, who was now wearing heavy gloves, approached her from in front. He raised the unstoppered bottle, began to pour its contents between her parted lips. Some of the corrosive fluid spilled on to Seiko’s clothing, which smoked acridly.

There was a murmur from the crowd, more than a murmur, a chorus of shouts. “She is a witch! Kill her! Kill her!”

Then, abruptly, Seiko regurgitated the acid that had been poured into her. The burning stream struck Gardiner full in the face. He dropped the bottle, which shattered, and screamed shrilly, clawing at his ruined eyes.

Incongruously the robot murmured, “I . . . am . . . sorry. But my . . . circuits . . . were not . . . designed to . . . take such punishment . . .”

Grimes was not sorry. The Chief Law Enforcer had deserved what he got. (To how many flesh-and-blood women had he applied this acid test?) And the bottle was broken and, hopefully, it would take some time to fetch a new one and, meanwhile, anything might happen . . .

Grimes hoped.

Chapter 28

The whimpering Gardiner
was led away by two of his subordinates. Presumably whoever passed for a doctor in this town would be able to assuage the pain, although not to do anything to save the man’s eyesight. But that was the least of Grimes’s worries. His main concern was for Seiko, for Shirl and Darleen and for himself. He reproached himself for not having carried to the beach, in addition to the recorder, a portable transceiver so that, at all times, he would have been in communication with his ship.

But he had never dreamed that Coffin would go to the extremes to which he already had gone—and to what extremes was he yet to go?
And you, Grimes, of all people,
he told himself,
should have learned by this time that allegedly civilized people are capable of anything, no matter how barbarous.

Coffin was speaking. “There is no doubt that the woman is a witch. Not only has she survived her ordeal uninjured but she has severely injured my chief law enforcer. She must pay the penalty.” He paused judicially, turned his head to stare at Grimes, Shirl and Darleen. “It was my intention to order that the acid test be applied to the other three accused. Unfortunately no further supply of acid is readily available. So I shall, therefore, temper justice with mercy. Grimes, Kelly and Byrne will be given the opportunity to confess and to recant. Should they do so, their ends will be swift and merciful. Should they not do so, they shall be executed in the same manner as their mistress. They will be permitted to watch her sufferings and, hopefully, such spectacle will be a stimulus to their consciences.

“Bring the faggots!”

Men and women brought bundles of sticks. (These must, thought Grimes, have been prepared well in advance.) They piled them around the stake to which Seiko was chained, concealing the lower half of her body. A law enforcer poured some fluid—flammable oil, it was—over the faggots. He struck a long match, applied the flame all around the base of the pile.

With a loud
whoosh
the oil ignited and there was an uprush of smoky fire. Seiko’s hair—but it’s only a
wig,
thought Grimes—flared and crackled. Then the initial fury of the burning oil subsided but the faggots had caught, were snapping in the heat, emitting sparks, sending their flames curling up around Seiko’s body. Although the cloth of her coveralls was flame-resistant it was beginning to char and to powder. A sigh, a horribly obscene sound, went up from the mob as one perfect breast was exposed.

Suddenly, audible even over the crackling of the fire, the murmurs of the crowd, there was a startlingly loud
click
! Seiko, who had been sagging in her bonds, stood erect. Her wrists, which had been tied behind her back, were already free, the flames having burned away the rope. But even if this had not been the case it would not have mattered. The strength that she now exerted to snap the chains would have been more than enough to break mere vegetable fiber. As she stood there, ridding herself of the last of her bonds, the crumbling remnants of her clothing fell from around her smoke-smudged body. She was like, thought Grimes, Aphrodite rising from the sea—a sea of fire. And he, even at this moment, had to repress a giggle. A Venus without arms, a Venus de Milo, he might accept—but a bald-headed one was altogether too much. (Her body paint had survived the fire although her wig had not.) Even so, she was beautiful—and not only because her escape from the pyre had brought a renewal of hope.

Men were shouting, women and children were screaming, but none dare approach this vengeful she-devil. Coffin was bellowing, “Seize her! Seize her! Strike her down!”

“Good on yer, Seiko!” yelled Darleen. “Show the bastards!”

There was a meter of broken chain in Seiko’s right hand. She threw it. It wrapped itself around Coffin’s neck, all but decapitating him. His two clerks squealed in terror, dived under the table, from the surface of which the pastor’s blood dripped down upon them. Seiko stepped out of the fire, flames and sparks splashing about her feet. Two law enforcers, braver or more stupid than their fellows, ran at her with heavy clubs upraised. She countered their assault with the savate technique that she must have learned from Shirl and Darleen; her long right leg flashed out while she pivoted on her left heel; first one man and then the other (although there was almost no interval between the two blows) were the recipients of a crippling kick to the groin. In horror Grimes noted that the trousers of each unfortunate were smouldering where the kicks had landed. Seiko’s feet must be almost redhot. (But it was her feet for which he felt concern, not the genitals of the law enforcers.)

He felt the heat emanating from her body as she approached him, as her hands reached out for his chains. But she was careful not to touch him.

She said, “Do not worry about me, John. I am heat-resistant. I feel no pain, as you know it. And it was the heat of the fire that released my master switch . . .”

She left him to his own devices, went to free the two New Alicians.

Grimes looked around, fearing fresh attack. But the light of the oil lanterns on their posts revealed a waterfront empty save for himself and his women, the body of Coffin sprawled over the table and the two still-living (but for how long?) bodies of the law enforcers. The pair of clerks had made their escape unnoticed.

“Well,” said Grimes with deliberate matter-of-factness, “that seems to be it. We’ve had our incident. Let’s get back to the ship. Come, Shirl. Come, Darleen. And you, Seiko, can guard our rear.”

“I am staying,” said the robot.

“Seiko, I order you to come with us.”

“John, your father was my original owner. He ordered me to protect you when necessary.”

“Then protect me as I walk back to the spaceport.”

She said, “We could be attacked.” With a long forefinger she touched her navel. “I have learned my vulnerability in a scrimmage. A club, a flung stone, even a heavy fist and I can be jolted into near-immobility. There is only one way to ensure your safety. Those people . . .” she gestured toward the town, “ . . . must be taught a lesson.”

It was not toward the houses she ran but to the slipway, up which the schooners were hauled for the scraping and caulking of the underwater portions of their hulls. It was toward the slipway that she ran, and down the slipway. When her body entered the black water there was an uprising of steam.

Then she was gone from sight.

“Crazy robot!” grumbled Grimes. “Being cooked must have affected her brain . . .”

“She knows what she is doing, John,” said Darleen loyally.

“Does she? I wish that I did.” He could sense that from darkened windows he was being watched. He wondered how long it would be before the New Salemites, seeing that the most dangerous witch had plunged into the sea, would come pouring out of their houses to exact vengeance for the death of their pastor and the injuries inflicted upon his law enforcers. He said, “I think that we should be getting out of here.”

Shirl said, “But we can’t leave Seiko . . . “

“I know,” said Grimes. “But . . .”

“Do you hear her?” Shirl asked Darleen.

“Yes.” Then, to Grimes, “Do not worry so, John. Everything will be all right.”

From whose viewpoint
? he wondered.

Then up the shipway she strode. The sea had washed the grime of smoke and fire from her pale body. Up the slipway she strode—and behind her, a living tide, surged the silkies. As she passed Grimes on her way inshore she made a gesture that was more formal salute than cheery wave. And the silkies grunted—in greeting or talking among themselves? But Shirl and Darleen replied in kind.

The robot and her army reached the sea frontage of the town. There was shouting and screaming, the splintering crashes as doors were burst in, as wooden walls succumbed to the onslaught of tons of angry flesh and blood. Fires started in a dozen places—the result of overturned lamps or lit by intent? Grimes did not know but suspected that Seiko was exacting retaliation in kind for what she had undergone. Fires started, and spread.

“This has gone too far,” said Grimes.

“It has not gone far enough,” Shirl told him. “The silkies said to us that she had told them that they were not to kill. To destroy only, but not to kill. That’s the trouble with robots. They have this built-in, altogether absurd directive that human beings are never to be harmed by them.”

“Wherever did you get that idea?” asked Grimes.

“While we were waiting for you on Earth we did quite a lot of reading. There were some books, classics, by an old writer called Asimov.”

“Then what about him?” Grimes gestured toward the pastor’s body. “Wasn’t he harmed? Fatally, at that.”

“Yes, John,” said Darleen patiently. “But he was going to harm you, and Seiko was doing her best to protect you.”

The town was ablaze now, the roaring of the flames drowning out all other noises coming from that direction. Satisfied with the havoc that they had wrought, the silkies were returning to the sea. There was light enough for Grimes to see that some were wounded, with great patches of fur burned from their bodies. Others bled from long and deep gashes. But their musical grunting sounded like a chant of victory.