The Hunter on Arena (19 page)

It was a long time before she was strong enough to sit up, leaning against and supported by Allo’s shaggy body. The water
carrier had hobbled off and returned as fast as her legs could carry her, bringing a gourd of hot, herbal brew which the woman
sipped in shallow draughts.

“Did he send you?” Septua asked, without waiting for the woman to speak.

“Who?” she replied, obviously confused by the dwarf’s question.

“’Im. Jorund, that’s who. ’Im what got me in ’ere. ’Im what Braldt thinks is gonna save us. That’s who.”

“Braldt? Is that your name? Yes, now that I see you close… I can see the difference. But you are so much like him. I thought…
I wanted to think…” Her voice trailed off.

“Hey, lady! Don’t die, huh! We got enough trouble now without you croakin’!” cried the dwarf.

“I would not think to cause you further difficulty,” the woman said with a wry smile as she struggled upright. “Nor would
I wish to misrepresent my intentions. As to Jorund’s intentions I cannot say, I can but speak for my own. I did not come here
to save you for I did not even know you existed. I came here to see this man whom I mistook for one I once knew and cared
for long ago. I thought it was he, and while they are much alike, they are not the same. I thought… we all thought… but it
seems we were wrong.”

“’Ow can you tell?” argued Septua, unwilling to relinquish even this one small thread of hope. “’Ow can you tell? It might
be ’im, whoever ’e was. You all look the same!”

“No.” The woman smiled gently at the dwarf. “There are differences among us, slight though they might be. This is not the
one called Bracca Jocobe. I fear that he is long dead on another world.”

“What world?” Braldt asked sharply, and Lomi looked at him in surprise, considering once again the shape of his head and the
sound of his voice. “A world
without a name, K7 as the star charts call it. A distant world rich in precious minerals.”

“Rhodium,” said Braldt.

“Yes, rhodium! How did you know?” asked Lomi, her voice filled with amazement.

“Because this uninhabited world, this K7 as you call it, is my home. I think that we have much to talk about.”

Before the leading edge of the primary sun advanced over the edge of the horizon, Lomi and Braldt had talked and explored
the mystery of the past. Much had been revealed and sorrow had accompanied enlightenment.

They had pieced together their bits of information and come to the unavoidable conclusion that Braldt was the son of Bracca
Jocobe and the woman Mirim. Braldt had learned that his father had been the high-born son of a powerful Thane. Always an outspoken
youth, Bracca had involved himself in dissident issues as he grew older and eventually incurred the wrath of the rest of the
high council by arguing against the colonization of K7, a populated world, which was in direct contravention of the Whole
World Federation’s directives.

Bracca’s charismatic personality had earned him the respect and loyalty of many of the younger Thanesons as well as Lomi’s
quiet, unspoken love. The High Thanes had seen the light of a dangerous rebellion in the young Bracca, a threat to all their
carefully laid plans. In vain did they try to convince the young Thaneson that the colonization of K7 was necessary for their
own planet’s existence.

What possible harm, they argued, could come from
the taking of a mineral from a world whose inhabitants were thousands of years away from its possible use. Inhabitants who
had barely progressed beyond the age of bronze, who placed their belief in animistic spirits and dieties of the earth.

But the young idealist would not be convinced and threatened to report the Thanes to the World Federation. If Bracca had not
been the son of a reigning Thane, he might have been dispatched without conscience, but his father had been a member of the
ruling council for a score of years and still had many powerful friends. These friends dissuaded other, angrier voices from
killing Bracca outright, but everyone knew that something had to be done.

Bracca and his young wife and newborn son had been imprisoned in these same cells for safekeeping, to prevent either side
from taking hasty, improper action before a rational compromise had been agreed upon.

Unfortunately, irrational behavior existed on both sides, and one dark night, Bracca’s friends set a number of explosives
at the mine’s processing plants, hoping to frighten the Thanes into releasing their leader. Their plan backfired.

Worried that the young Thanesons were indeed a serious threat, another group of the Thanes spirited Bracca and his wife and
child out of the prison and into the transmission chamber. In one swift, irreversible move, they sent the defenseless trio
hurtling through time and space to the planet K7 to live or die as fate and their wits would have it, depriving the young
rebellion of its heart and soul and themselves of their worst enemy.

This action caused serious uprisings on the small way station called Rototara as well as their home planet, Valhalla. The
young militants, as well as the thinkers and dreamers, united over the cause which had brought about the banishment of their
young leader.

Lomi’s quiet voice held them all in thrall as she explained how the Thane tried desperately to calm the unexpected rebellion.
Although it was not their habit to explain their actions, those who were defying them were their own sons and others of their
blood.

They explained to all who would listen that they had believed K7 to be uninhabited, only discovering the primitive population
after they had already established a mine for the extraction of rhodium. Rhodium was a rare mineral essential for space travel
and its discovery was the answer to their own barren planet’s problems, for while Valhalla was indeed a magnificent planet,
it possessed absolutely no resources which would make it economically viable or able to support its burgeoning population.

Literally everything needed for life had to be brought in from other worlds, and to do so cost a great deal of money. The
Thanes were desperate to find a means to support their world. It was impossible to return to the old, dying earth and before
the discovery of rhodium, they had been forced to return to their ancient heritage and become pirates.

But the Thanes were worried. Piracy was profitable and had worked for a time, but eventually, other offworlders came together
to create the Whole World Federation which regulated the rules of the galaxy, the rules by
which all offworlders were governed. It was impossible to defy the WWF for it possessed a superior war fleet capable of blasting
transgressors into Stardust.

The Thanes still looted and raided when it was deemed safe, but they could no longer depend on such actions to support their
world which had grown larger and larger and far more complex, requiring vast amounts of money to survive, much less compete
in the galactic market.

Rhodium and K7 were the answers to their problems for rhodium was needed by every race capable of space travel. In all the
known universe, only rhodium was capable of protecting hulls from the intense heat encountered when departing or re-entering
atmospheres. It was a dream come true, financial solvency that would make Valhalla the richest planet in the galaxy.

It was the revelation of the financial benefits that finally put out the fires of the rebellion, for even the young idealists
were able to recognize the fact that their own lives were at risk. When faced with the concern for an unknown race of primitive
people on a far distant planet or the continuance of their own pleasant lifestyle, there was really no choice.

A small, hard-core band of resisters including Lomi and Jorund remained, but for their own safety, they were forced to remain
silent. They had watched and waited over the years, inheriting positions of power as they came available and carefully and
quietly inducting new members to their cause.

Unaware of their existence, the Thanes had continued on with their work on K7, excavating the mine,
installing the expensive equipment necessary for the extraction of the rhodium and staffing it with robots. They also sent
along the Madrelli, an apelike race which they had genetically and chemically manipulated to make them the perfect slave worker.

The Thanes had been telling the truth. It was only after the mine was fully operational and an enthusiastic and captive market
established for their high-grade rhodium, that they had discovered that the planet was inhabited by not one or two but a score
of primitive yet intelligent races.

It was a disaster of staggering proportions. The Thanes conferred and after long discussion decided that they had only three
options. They could abide by the WWF’s rules and abandon K7 which would mean planetary ruin. They could kill off the native
population which no one besides themselves even knew existed. Or, they could devise some elaborate plan which would keep the
two civilizations apart.

In the end, there was really no argument, for deception was far more preferable to wholesale murder. An elaborate fiction
was composed, rather simplistic actually, but in the case of a civilization that had barely advanced beyond the Bronze Age,
more than adequate. They had composed a pastiche of old earth religions based on weather and natural events and animistic
deities that would appeal to the primitive mind and put it all in place with the introduction of black-robed “priests” who
were, in fact, nothing more than robots draped in voluminous robes that concealed their non-human features.

The Thanes were able to monitor all happenings via
small “seeing eyes” and silver discs implanted in the palms of the robots’ hands and chests that were listening devices. When
it was necessary to sway the natives in one direction or another, “visions” were miraculously created by a robot priest placing
his hand directly against the forehead of one selected to receive the “vision.” Group visions were projections of holograms
which had never failed to convince the impressionable natives who held the mysterious priests in reverential awe.

To complete the religion and further protect themselves, the Thanes erected immense, stone monoliths, much in the image of
themselves, and placed them at the edges of the natives’ land, creating a buffer zone and separating them from the previous
mines as well as from the Madrelli who knew all too well of their existence.

The scheme had worked brilliantly. The care and handling of native affairs was overseen by a small group of Thanes who maintained
a close watch on the lives of their charges and saw to it that they remained wrapped in the heavy cloak of the religion that
had been created for them. They also saw to it that the natives did not advance too swiftly, purposely holding them at a semi-primitive
state, for advanced thinkers and skeptics could mean nothing but trouble.

But of course such thinkers and skeptics did arise from time to time and these were dealt with swiftly and harshly. They seldom
lived long enough to cause anyone any trouble.

The last thing the Thanes had expected was trouble on their own world. So alert were they to trouble on K7 that they were
taken entirely by surprise by Bracca’s
incipient rebellion and they acted foolishly. An intelligent solution would have been to have offered the young idealist a
position on the Council for Native Affairs—a position with high rank and title and very little actual power, but enough to
convince the young firebrand that there was the possibility of progress in his cause.

Instead, they had reacted swiftly and without thought, setting in motion events that would have far-reaching implications.

This much was known to Lomi and she shared her knowledge with Braldt, but that was far from all of the story. There was no
way she could have known that Bracca and his young wife had perished almost immediately on the hostile and unfamiliar planet,
having the misfortune to arrive in the desert in the middle of the hot season. Unfortunately and inexplicably, the infant
sheltered by his father’s body survived long enough to be found by the natives.

By this time, the Thanes’ misguided actions had come to light and Bracca’s enraged and grief-stricken father, although unable
to retrieve the child, refused to permit its death. The child’s existence was a closely guarded secret, one that Brandtson
had no reason to share with Lomi, but of great importance to the old man.

Brandtson had manipulated events and caused the child to be given into the care of the chief’s family. His grief over the
loss of his son and daughter-in-law was somewhat comforted by his ability to oversee the child’s progress as Braldt and the
chief, Auslic, a fine and noble leader, developed a close and loving bond.

But his fellow Thanes did not share his happiness. Far from it. They were nervous and concerned over the existence of the
child, viewing him as a terrible threat. How could one of their race fail to be superior in every way, even when surrounded
by an inferior, primitive species? And indeed that proved to be the case. They made certain that the child was closely watched
from his very youngest days on, so that they would be forewarned of any danger.

And so began a ballet of sorts with Brandtson overseeing his grandson from afar and his fellow Thanes, not powerful enough
to kill him or depose him, attempting to control the child as well. They tried to steer him into the priesthood, for there,
surrounded by their robots, they would have been able to exert the most control over his actions. But Braldt was not cut from
a priestly cloth. From the very first, it was clear that true to his ancient lineage, he was a warrior.

In spite of the Thanes’ efforts to hold him back, Braldt excelled in everything. His skills in weaponry were unmatched by
anyone, even his teachers. He had made remarkable strides in education, absorbing everything he was taught and yearning for
more. He carried abstract deduction to levels that astounded his mentors, advancing the study of mathematics into areas that
had never even been thought of, and he developed a new process of smelting that produced harder metal capable of holding a
keener edge than had ever been possible.