The Super Barbarians (3 page)

Many of Earth’s finest cities had been razed during the war; it had been a shock: to me, though, the first time I came here to find a difference between this city and any I had known at home. Through the poverty of an Earthly city, caused by the generation-long drain of our manufacturing potential to satisfy the greedy Vorra, a certain sophistication had survived. An Earthly street was colorful, and often had a basic rhythm of design. Vorrish streets never did. Everywhere the colors were drab, and the houses looked as though they had just been dumped where they stood, without thought.

The streets were busy, which cheered things up a little. As I stood checking the gridiron pattern in my mind to decide which way I had to go to arrive most quickly at my destination, women with big-wheeled trolleys pushed past me to fetch their family’s provisions, men on business errands, couriers with their red helmets providing a splash of brilliance, police in black with white-painted harness, and draymen cursing their obstinate oxen all went by.

But no Earthmen, it seemed. That was still puzzling.

I shrugged, and made to cross the road to where I had to go. A sharp voice bellowed, at me, telling me to stand where I was, and as I drew back a group of trainee soldiers came doubling around the corner, wearing insignia I could not place.

Like magic virtually everyone stopped what he or she was doing and jumped to the nearest doorway; failing a doorway, they pressed to the wall or ducked behind a cart. The same harsh voice that had bellowed at me—it belonged to the squad commander—ordered halt, dress, test weapons.

The Vorrish method of testing weapons was beautifully simple; each man raised, sighted and fired. A wall they happened to be facing when they halted, which fortunately had only one small window in it, was instantly stuck full of bullets. I had heard veterans say how childishly Vorrish infantry seemed to enjoy using their weapons after their landing on Earth, when mopping up pockets of resistance, and in particular of their fondness for spectacular blazes. They would happily spend half an hour watching a building burn down while Earthly troops took advantage of the delay to make good their escape.

Well, this was spectacular enough; they had fired magnesium bullets, which were ignited by the charge in the breech and leapt out like fireworks to become brief, blinding pockmarks of Silver glare on the wall.

A little shamefacedly, the people who had ducked for shelter began to move about again. Conscious of the impression he had created, the squad commander stamped up and down in front of his men snuffing the barrels of their guns to make certain they had all fired.

Unless they were going to start popping off again, I didn’t see any further reason for hanging about. I began to cross the street, and it was that which made people look at me closely for the first time.

Most of the Vorra were thickset, light-eyed, and shrouded in outdoor cloaks like mine; about one in eight or nine of the men going out and coming on the streets wore a house shield as I did. At first glance it wasn’t obvious that I was an Earthman. The differences that signified were mainly internal.

Nonetheless, an Earthman would always give himself away if he didn’t consciously imitate the Vorrish way of
walking, the angle at which a Vorrish head set on Vorrish shoulders, and the hang of the empty hands; the Vorra kept their fingers straight by their sides.

Someone behind me said in a tone of vague disbelief, “Earthman…?”

The squad commander caught the word, glanced at me, and stiffened. Under his bristly-whiskered upper lip, I saw his teeth show.

I stopped dead in my tracks, not liking the sudden air of hostility which surrounded me, not liking the way everyone in the street had turned to stare at me.

“Squad!” said the commander. “ ‘Bout turn!”

Like mechanical dolls the men spun where they stood. At each man’s side the recently fired gun caught the sunlight.

“Aim!” said the squad commander, and the guns sprang to firing position.

Maybe he expected me? to stand where I was—I don’t know. I think perhaps I would have, because I was so astonished. But some overenthusiastic person in the crowd picked a big tuber off a wagon of vegetables and flung it at me, and that broke my trance.

I took to my heels.

There was a note of savage anger in the commander’s voice as he screamed, “Fire!”

But I had just got around the corner of a house, and the only bullet to come close to me caught the hem of my cloak.

What in hell was all this! for? A joke?

But it sounded like a very serious joke. As I went charging and leaping along the streets, mob noise followed me. I wasn’t shot at again, but things were thrown at me, and one or two eggs landed and made my cloak a sticky mess. Fortunately
I was past most of the people I encountered before they caught on to what was happening and joined in the chase, but one quick-witted stallholder rolled a barrel into my path and sent me sprawling.

With battered knees and filthy hands—for this street was thick with market refuse—I picked myself up and hurried on, heart pounding.

Unconsciously I was heading for the Acre. I had only a Couple of blocks to go, but they seemed like miles. When I risked a glance back I saw that I had at least a score of pursuers.

What had I stumbled into?

Suddenly I saw ahead of me, hanging above a mean little alleyway, a store sign in Earthly lettering. Miracle! I thought, and dived towards it. A few paces ahead of me a youth—maybe twenty or younger—who had been attracted by the shouts behind me, stepped into the alley. I practically fell over him.

“Earthman?,, he said, quite calm, as though this happened every day.

“Yes!” I gasped, having hardly enough breath to pronounce a single word.

“In the alley. Gustav! Marijane!”

I went past him. From the same doorway where he had appeared, another youth and a girl with untidy fair hair came out. They seemed to size up the situation in an in’ stance. Linking arms with my rescuer, the girl in the middle, they blocked off the end of the alley with their bodies.

I thought at first they were insane, for when my pursuers came to the alley mouth they were ranting and waving cudgels. Yet the sight of the three young people calmly waiting seemed to act on them like a dash of cold water.
Only one hothead came forward, ahead of the rest, to point his club threateningly.

“What have you done with him?” he demanded in Vorrish, using superior-to-inferior forms.

My rescuer’s face was turned away from me, so I couldn’t see his expression, but I heard his scratching voice. “The Acre starts here,” he said. “If you want to come in, you come alone and with empty hands.”

What he actually said was “empty paws,” in effect, because he used the human-to-animal forms which were reserved for pets, domestic cattle and the filthiest insults. Huddled in the doorway of the shop, I closed my eyes. Surely no Vorra was going to take that from anyone!

Only there was no noise of fighting. When I looked again, someone else from the crowd had stepped forward and was leading the hothead away, fuming and casting angry glances back over his shoulder.

The three of them waited till the crowd had dispersed unwillingly. Then they dropped their linked arms and dusted their hands with an air of satisfaction. As they returned to where I was skulking, I stood up feeling curiously ashamed.

“Thank you,” I said. “I wasn’t ready for that.”

“What happened?” the one called Gustav inquired.

“A trainee army squad—wanted to use me for target practice.” I tried to sound as offhand and casual as they did.

“You shouldn’t have been out on your own, then,” Gustav retorted. “They’ve been making shows of strength all round the Acre for a good thirty days now.”

A puzzled look came across his face. “How come you were on your own, anyway?” he said. “And who are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

“Ken! Gustav!” The girl Marijane spoke in a commanding tone. She threw out her arm and pointed.

I had been standing half in the embrasure of the shop door, and my left arm, with my house shield, was in shadow; it was dark in the alley anyway because the buildings were too closeset for such sun to pass between them.

The youths followed the pointing arm. One moment later, and an expression of more hostility than I had seen even in the eyes of my pursuers lit their faces. Ken strode forward, taking my right arm, twisting it savagely behind my back and levering me into the middle of the alley; from a sheath behind him Gustav produced a knife and presented it to my goggling eyes, while Marijane caught the rim of my shield in two hands and jerked it around for the others to inspect so sharply my elbow was almost sprained.

“House of Pwill!” said Gustav thoughtfully. “Well, he sold himself to a high bidder, obviously. I didn’t know we had anyone in service there.”

Marijane let go of the shield as though it were red-hot, and gave me a disgusted look. Hell and damnation—what had I done that the first Earthly woman I saw in seven months was so revolted by me?

“Don’t be so cynical, Gustav!” she snapped. “High bidder, high schmidder—he’s still a dirty serf! Should have left him to the mob out there, if you ask me.”

Abruptly Ken let go my right arm. I straightened up, rubbing the sore place where his hands had closed; he had muscles, that young man.

“Calm, Marijane,” he said. “Well, serf? What brings you?”

Helplessly confused, I said, “I have to—have to do something for my employer’s ninth wife.”

“Such as what?”

“I’m not sure! I just have to go to this address in the Acre and repeat a message she gave me, and—”

I broke off. Ken had pursed his lips and was nodding his head back and forth, “i see,” he said. ‘I see. An address on 660 at 127 by any chance?”

“Why—yes!”

“That’s Kramer’s place,” Ken said to his companions. Gustav nodded.

“It is well known?” I said. “I never came here before—”

“That’s obvious!” snapped Marijane. “We all know there are bastardly serfs like you, but we don’t like our noses rubbed in it! If you get let out of here, and if you pluck up enough nerve to come back, stuff that perditious shield first, and don’t wave it around the Acre.”

She looked at Ken. “You’re not going to just let him loose in the Acre!” she challenged. “He might be lying—he might have sold out all the way!”

Gustav nodded. “I agree with Marijane,” he said in his rather soft, pleasant voice. “Since we got hold of him, it’s up to us to clear him with, the folks on top.”

“That’s settled, then.” Ken gestured sharply along the alley. “Move, you! And go exactly where we say, hear?”

I
WAS EAGER
enough to cooperate and do what I could to set the record straight after my idiotically clumsy entry into the Acre for the first time. But I had no choice anyway. Gustav kept the knife in his hand.

Belatedly I thought of my shield, and fumbled it off my forearm to bundle it up in my cloak.

“That’s better,” Marijane said scornfully when she saw what I was doing, and I felt slightly more cheerful.

There was none of the random bustle I had seen outside in the rest of the city. Here in the Acre people moved with a purpose, and not very many of them were moving. We traversed several blocks and saw perhaps a dozen people, not counting some toddling children. What had been shops on the ground level of the ramshackle houses seemed in general to have been turned into workshops; at any rate, as we passed by there was a hum of machinery from many doors and windows. Of course, the human community couldn’t support itself without some basic services; there were shops here and there, such as barber shops and one or two grocery stores, but fewer than I would have thought necessary to support the supposed thousands of Earthly inhabitants.

I didn’t ask questions, though.

We had been walking for perhaps five or ten minutes, following a twisted path, when we came to a house finer than most of the others, facing the broadest street traversing the Acre—125. Already my consternation at the way I had been treated was yielded to relief at once more being among human people: taller and thinner than most Vorra, with skins of familiar Earthly shades from blond through tan to chocolate, instead of the eternal sallow-brick of the Vorra; speaking Earthly languages, and signing their shops with Earthly lettering. But this fine house I was brought to was a shock.

It had large glass windows at street level, without shutters, and on these windows was painstakingly written in gold
leaf or something similar, the words C
ENTRAL EARTHLY BANK AND EXCHANGE
.

At the door a man of about my own age, smartly dressed by comparison with my companions—who didn’t look as if they worried much about their clothes—challenged us. Ken spoke for the others.

“Serf. First time in the Acre. Claims he’s on innocent business. But you never know with serfs.”

The doorkeeper nodded. “So you brought him round for a check?”

“That’s right.”

“Go on in, then. Wait till you’re sent for. Wait on the seats at the right of the hall.”

They took my arms and steered me inside.

Now this was nothing like anything I’d seen on Qallavarra before. It was a hall, rather dark, with a curving stairway rising to the upper floors from opposite the entrance. There were pictures of Earth on the walls—one of a city I didn’t recognize, two of hills and forests. There were benchlike seats, hard, plain, probably hand-carpentered from local wood, but indisputably of Earthly rather than Vorrish design. On the floor was a bluish plastic finish, and the walls were red and gray.

That was a jab at the Vorra, though it wasn’t likely many of them were ever in a position to appreciate it. Red, blue and gray together was a combination of colors reserved for the high nobility, and anyone else using it was apt to suffer.

The guard came in with us, spoke to a hard-eyed man in a black suit, received a curt grunt of agreement, and turned to Ken.

“You’ll have a few minutes to wait; they’re engaged with
a visitor. But he says things are going well and you won’t have long to hang about.” “Fair enough.”