The Enemy of My Enemy (11 page)

That death was coming through the sky.

At length the time came and the signal was given and the lines ceased their absolute and supra-humanly beautiful rigidity (“ … beauty bare … ,” some ancient one had called geometry). Within no limits other than his own safety and that of his fellows, each floater was now free to do that which had brought him here. The stones thudded, the rocks rattled, all as before; as before, the voices howled — But no more than that was as before. There was no element of surprise now, and, besides, the shields were up. The Volanth fled, they ran for their lives, they sped along the ground, they leaped and bounded along for all the world as though they did not know that there was nowhere to go.

“Hold fire; contact only,” was the signal for the first phase.

Contact!
A delicately understated word … . There was here, too, a matter of mathematically calculable precision — arithmetic, though, and not geometry. When a vehicle of weight X, going at speed Y, is brought into contact with a man, the effect is as though the said man has fallen from a height of distance Z.

Perhaps, thought Tonorosant, in some idle, theorizing corner of his mind, perhaps the word was not after all arithmetic, but algebra.

The first Volanth was flung away from his float as though an electric shock had passed through his body, hairy arms and legs flailing. The second seemed to have been badly put together and at once fell apart. The third turned and ran at him with inward-scooping arms and bared teeth — that face was visible long after nothing else of its body was. The fourth burst and smeared. The fifth —

But Tonorosant kept no more count.

In the scrub and brush and salt weeds along the Gulf of Lare, one of the few areas of Pemath which could not be and was not kept under intensive cultivation, lived the tufty, ill-tasting and ill-smelling small sandloper. Ordinarily, its flesh could not be sold for a ticky at a beggar’s mart. But years came, and the man known as Jerred Northi could remember one of them, when the hunger was so great upon the land of Pemath that the poorest of the poor fled from their hovels in hordes and made for the wastelands; swarming across them and driving the sandlopers from their stinking dens and clubbing them to death — falling upon them, eating their flesh raw and bloody.

It seemed to him that this was what was happening now.

He kept trying to remember the torn body of the border warden and wife and mother. He remembered without trying the Volanth servant woman who had winked with her dead eyes. He did not want to remember the dead child … but he did. He did.

The morning was one great scream and smear of blood.

Suddenly the signal,
Desist
, came. It was repeated twice. Finally it was obeyed. Tonorosant found that he was sweeping around in wobbling, irregular circles. There was a droning sound in his ears and a dreadful face, dreadfully accusing, before his eyes. For a moment he thought it was the man he had ridden down, the third one, who had turned as though to fight. Then he saw that it was only part of a face. Tellecest’s. “Yes,” he said. And, “Thank you.” The face vanished. He looked about and saw that most of the craft had grounded. There were no more signals, so, after a while, he did the same.

Some of the Volanth were still running, still screaming. But the sound had a different quality now. He saw a man from his hundred walk casually over to a child who was standing there, dazed and slack-mouthed, and chop at its neck with the edge of his hand. The child went down, kicked once with one leg, moved no more. Almost at once another child sprang up from the ground and ran off, grotesquely spraddle-legged, and urinating in terror. The man did not follow, but, catching his fellow levy-man’s eye, cocked his head after the fleeing, spraying child, and grinned. Then he yawned, stretched, made faces of mock deprecation. A look of great interest came suddenly upon him, and Tonorosant turned to see.

More Volanth. Running. All running. Behind them, Tarnisi. Also running. Running after the Volanth. It took a moment for him to realize that this was but a third judgement, that his first look had told him only that there were
people
running, his second thought was that some were smooth and some were hairy. Something seemed to be wrong with his mind, his thoughts were not proceeding smoothly as though on a film; they were clicking on and off, abruptly, as though on slides.
Click
. People running.
Click
. Hairy. Smooth.
Click
. Tarnisi pursuing Volanth. Proper order of things.
Click
. Something odd,
not
proper.
Click
. Man ahead looks familiar.
Click
. Lord Tilionoth.
Unfamiliar. What?

The young lord reached out and seized one of the Volanth. They stumbled, both, were a moment upright, wrestling; tangled limbs; they fell, both, continued wrestling, tangled limbs: hairy ones, smooth ones: making dreadful noises, both of them. Then the figure pinned beneath, the Volanth, ceased to struggle. But the one on top did not.
What!

Click
.

Man. Woman.

Click …
.

And the man from Tonorosant’s hundred, who had been watching with intense, involved excitement, making encouraging, unconscious sounds, suddenly gave an abrupt cry which was almost a groan. Slipped from his clothes. Was gone, running, running, shouting.

Running, shouting, running, running, he was running in the hot, still air, and the hideously frightening and unfamiliar noises were behind him and beside him and ahead of him and his head hurt his legs hurt his feet hurt, he dared not stumble, he turned aside, there was no background and no scenery, and he ran and he ran and he
ran —

Again Tonorosant stepped forward, took command, and again Jerred Northi and Jerred Northi’s memories of Pemath were subdued and sank away. A bird sang, briefly, overhead. He cursed it. It was life, and life was loathsome. What use was it to flee from Pemath, child-hunt-tolerating Pemath, catering to the most corrupt tastes of the most corrupt rich — what use? — if all one’s efforts accomplished nothing more than this: to find in Tarnis, golden dream: this, this,
this?

Weakness and despair took him and shook him. He reached out for supports which were not there. It was a black moment, long and bitter and sick. It did not vanish away with a click, either, but it ebbed away, slowly, like water ebbs away into wet sand. He looked up and he blinked. Life was life. It need not be loathsome for long. And, certainly, it was better than death. Parallel lines might meet in infinity, he did not know, he had never been there to see. But sure it was that they never met before then. The parallels which only a moment before had so disturbed his mind and body were no parallels at all. Those hunted in Pemath had sinned in nothing, neither by commission nor by association. It was quite different here in Tarnis. This was a case of evil returned for evil. Nor could one nor need one nor for that matter should one be moralistic to the extent of describing this as evil. It was a mere matter of simple fact that on the present occasion the Volanth had struck the first blow, committed the first killing, the first rape, the first child-murder. And as for any question of who had struck the first blow over a thousand legend-shrouded years ago, what could be more futile than trying to follow such a trail. Probably no one and yet everyone.

He sighed. Like Pemath, Tarnis had a curse upon it. But he had needed not remain forever in Pemath. And nor need he here.

• • •

Long lines of sweating Volanth staggering beneath poled bales and baskets filed into Compound Ten, set down their burdens at direction of the drab-capped and -kilted clerks. The stores were being piled in steps and by now some of the steps had already been filled in solidly up to the tops of the compound’s walls. Timber and resin and grain, edible seeds and stables and sun-dried fruit, packed and sacked, root crops and dried fish, herbs and bark, and other items for which Tonorosant had no names. Most of the levy-men milled about, talking excitedly, giving the burdens and their bearers no more than an indifferent glance. One, however, went up to the tally-man.

“There’s more food-chop down there in the mud granaries along the ridge,” he said, gesturing.

The tally-man made a precise tick on his chart, gestured a gasping porter to halt. “Yes, master. We know. We not go-take it.”

“No? Oh. Why not, boy?”

The Pemathi gave a very slight shrug of his neat shoulders. “If we go-take all food-chop, master, tese Volant go-starve.”

“Let them!”

“If tey go-starve, master, be nobody go-grow food-chop here, next year.”

The Tarnisi, grown bored even before the answer was finished, turned and walked away. The tally-man made another tick on his chart, looked up, spat neatly in the middle of the porter’s face, gestured him onward, and brought his withe down in a stinging blow across the bent, retreating back. Then he beckoned the next one forward.

Tonorosant moved about, looking, listening. Lord Tilionoth was the center of a little group, all of whom were smiling. “No, really, did I take the first dip this morning?” he asked. “No one was in before me? Well, well … .” He preened himself. “I got in twice more, after that, you know — ” There was laughter.

“Here we do our best,” an older man said — grizzled Lord Mialagoth, “to keep their numbers down … and young lusty sprigs like my brother’s son here do
their
best to keep the numbers wp!” There was more laughter.

Tilionoth said, with shy determination, “And if we can get together after lunch, I will get in twice more or so, I must hope.”

Another burst of merriment. “ — spearsman in more senses than one,” Mialagoth guffawed.

“One grows tired of it, you know,” the young man went on, “if it becomes just a matter of rolling over in bed for it. But when a man has to run and wrestle for it — eh? You see what I mean.
Well
. I hope lunch isn’t long delayed. This whole campaign has given me the keenest appetite I’ve had in years. One should really be very
grateful
to the Volanth … wouldn’t you agree?”

They smiled and chuckled and nodded, and they patted him on the back.

Tonorosant had never been so active as now, after his return to the inlands. He swam, furiously and alone, hour after hour, in the cold and misty dawn alike as in the heat of noon. He spent long successive days checking and rechecking every detail of business with his clerks. He skimmed and darted and sped up and down the waterways, sometimes avoiding by none too safe a margin the nets and the weirs of the squat, sullen River Volanth. At night, often exhausted, but never, never pleasantly weary, he took the aids of drugs to help him sleep. They did not banish his dreams, they made them dimmer, and in the mornings he could remember only that they had not at all been nice.

But from people in general he remained away as much as he was able. The elegant young men, now laughing, now languid, so proud of their sleek and supple limbs and all the skills they had with them — these young men now aroused in him no longer any feelings of friendship, but only of disgust. He avoided the contacts which had previously served both friendship and commerce. Curiously — or, perhaps, not at all curiously — this seemed to arouse no hostility. On the contrary.

Lord Losacamant’s wife visited him, ostensibly to inquire if a “foreign toy” in which an older grandchild had expressed interest, was really both safe and proper. If this was her real reason or not, the mission was one which gave little good excuse to linger. She looked at her host, as he saw her out, with interest and sympathy.

“Poor young man,” she said, “he looks both sad and drawn. Ah, in your lonely exile you thought little, I must hope, that life among your own people could bring such sharp pain.”

“Lady Losacamant is very kind. I shall look happier another time, I must hope.”

“And I. You have seen dreadful things … . Well. They won’t occur often enough for you to grow used to them, I must hope, but may it not be that memory will fade? Come and see us at your convenient pleasure. We have old, sunken gardens which have, and have deserved some fame. I shall show you around. You will plan on it, I must hope … . I have many charming granddaughters,” she added, a trace of a smile stirring the composure of her mouth.

Another visitor, and, to Tonorosant’s subsequent surprise, one who to turned out to be not long unwelcome, was gray-haired Guardian Othofarinal. He had come to remind him of his former agreement to interest himself on behalf of the returned exiles.

“Unless action is taken, and firmly, and soon, they may in large measure merely augment the lackland class … which is, my sister’s sib, already large enough; in fact, over-large.”

Something flashed through Tonorosant’s mind and was evidently reflected on his face, however fleeting-fast, for the Guardian leaned forward and looked at him, keenly.

“You have already had some thoughts upon that subject, then, I take it? I would hear. I would hear.”

He hesitated. Then, slowly, and without mentioning a name, he recounted the incident of the lacklander in the levy at the time of the outland campaign: first, his distinctive type of unpleasantness; and, next, his resentment at the possibility of its being perhaps thought not essential to bury the desecrated bodies because they might have been lacklanders. Othofarinal nodded.

“Their resentment is perhaps only too well-founded and of too long standing, although it is often based upon trifles, or, indeed, upon nothing at all. And it is also true that their near-poverty is usually the reason for their accepting of positions which no one else would want. That murdered warden up there in the Outlands was undoubtedly happier and — until the end — better off than he would have been back here among us; still, though I never knew him, I’m in no doubt that he also resented his being there every single day, intensely and bitterly.

“What is to be done for them? The Lords, surely, will do nothing. It is a basic principle of theirs that, if anything should have been done about a particular thing, it would already have been done; since nothing was done about it, nothing
should
be done about it. So we see a class on whom the burdens of aristocracy are pressed and at the same time deprived of the means of maintaining that burden.
Lacklanders
. Why need they lack land? There is land enough for all … .