The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Buttoned SkyThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Buttoned SkyAuthor: Robert W. KreppsRelease date: May 21, 2010 [eBook #32473]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BUTTONED SKY ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Buttoned SkyAuthor: Robert W. KreppsRelease date: May 21, 2010 [eBook #32473]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: The Buttoned Sky
Author: Robert W. Krepps
Author: Robert W. Krepps
Release date: May 21, 2010 [eBook #32473]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BUTTONED SKY ***
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy August 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CHAPTER ICHAPTER IICHAPTER IIICHAPTER IVCHAPTER VCHAPTER VICHAPTER VIICHAPTER VIIICHAPTER IXCHAPTER XCHAPTER XICHAPTER XIICHAPTER XIIICHAPTER XIVCHAPTER XV
Legends spoke of Earth's glorious past, of freedom and greatness. But this was the future, ruled by god-globes, as men gazed fearfully at—
Legends spoke of Earth's glorious past, of freedom and greatness. But this was the future, ruled by god-globes, as men gazed fearfully at—
The squire he sat in Dolfya Town,He swilled the blood-dark wine:"O who can blight my happiness,Or face the power that's mine?"Then up there spoke his daughter fair:"The priest can end your joy;The globe can sap your might away,And the Mink can you destroy!"—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The squire he sat in Dolfya Town,He swilled the blood-dark wine:"O who can blight my happiness,Or face the power that's mine?"
Then up there spoke his daughter fair:"The priest can end your joy;The globe can sap your might away,And the Mink can you destroy!"
—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The day that Revel killed a god, he woke early. There was a bitter taste in his mouth, and a pain in his ear where somebody'd hit him during a shebeen brawl the night before. He rolled over on his back. The bed was a hollowed place in the earth floor, filled with leaves and dried grass and spread with yellow-brown mink skins sewn into a big blanket; he'd slept on it every night of his twenty-eight years, but this morning it felt hard and uncomfortable.
The water gourd was empty. In the cold gray mists of dawn he groped his way sleepily to the well behind the hut, and drew up the bucket.
"Damn the gentry!" he burst out. The bucket, an ancient thing made of oak slats pegged together with wooden dowels, was half filled with dirt and rotten brush. "Curse their lousy carcasses to hell!" he yelled, and, suddenly scared, looked around to see if perhaps a god was floating somewhere near him. But no yellow glimmering showed in the mists.
Laboriously he cleaned out the well, dropping the bucket time after time and dragging up loads of trash. Some roving band of gentry had fouled the water for sport. Anything that hurt the ruck, made them more work or injured them in any way, was sport for the squirarchy.
At last he got a bucket of cold and almost clean water, filled the big gourd and carried it back to the one-room hut. The morning that had begun badly was getting worse; his mother's limp was painful to see; she must have had a hard night. Bent and gray and as juiceless as the grass of their beds, she slept more lightly and fretfully with every passing month. Many years before a squire had ridden her down in the lanes of Dolfya Town, as she scurried out of the path of his great stallion, and her broken leg had mended crookedly. A few hours on the mink-covered bed crippled her up so that moving was an agony.
With the impious brain at the center of his skull—Revel had long before decided that he had a number of brains, one obedient, one rebellious, one dull, one keen and inquisitive, and so on—with the impious brain he now cursed the gods and the gentry and the priests, and everyone above the ruck who preyed on them and made their lives so stinking awful. If he had thought then of killing a god, the idea would have seemed pleasant indeed. But quite impossible, of course, for a man of the ruck did not touch a god, much less slay one.
He did not think of such a thing, but cursed the gods briefly and then turned off his impious brain and began to wolf down his food. He paid no attention to what he ate—it was the same old bread of wild barley seeds, the same old boiled rabbit.
When he finished, he glanced at his mother, feeling sorry for her, wishing that she would go to the shebeens with him and have at least a little happiness before she died. He wondered if she had ever known any joy, any hope such as he had in drunken flashes now and then of belief that life might some day be better for the ruck. He shook his head, grabbed his miner's pick, booted his brother in the ribs to waken him, and left the miserable hut to walk to the mine for his day's work.
The day was brightening, and above him in concentric circles to the horizon and beyond hovered the eternal red and blue buttons. He looked up grimly. Always there, in all the spoken history of man, stretched above the world to keep watch on every action of the ruck. The buttons were full of gods, omnipotent, omnipresent.
The mine was a mile from his hut, which lay on the outskirts of Dolfya. It was halfway down a long valley, a gut between hills pitted with many other mines. There coal was dug for the gentry and the priests. He walked up to the entrance, gave his name telepathically to the god-guard at the top of the shaft, and went down the ladders until he'd reached his level. Another god passed him there, its aura of energy just touching his skin and tingling it into small bumps.
Shutting off the thoughts of his various brains from any probing mind that might be eavesdropping, he said to himself, Always, always they're near a man! You go out of your hut and there's a god, a big golden globe hanging in the air shoving its tentacles at you and reading your mind. You come down the mine shaft and every hundred feet or so you see the yellow luminosity. Why can't they leave us alone! Why can't they stick to their temples, and exact their worship on Orbsday, instead of all week long, all day long, every day in the year!
He came to his work place, a dead-end tunnel. Jerran was there before him, as usual. Revel grinned at him. Jerran was a runty wisp of a man, with a face the color of old straw, and he had been Revel's friend since the day he came to the mine from distant Hakes Town by the sea. A wonderful drinking companion, Jerran, but he wouldn't brawl ... strange! He was forever pulling Revel out of fights and trying to teach him serenity.
As Revel greeted him, he involuntarily glanced at the end of the tunnel. There, behind a carefully casual erection of boulders, lay their secret cave. They'd broken into it the morning before, and after no more than a hasty glimpse of unknown wonders, and a check to see that no globes were in sight, they'd walled up the opening and begun to dig along the shaft's sides. Revel wasn't quite sure why he had followed Jerran's lead in keeping it secret, but the brain which had decided to do it must be the rebellious one. All secrets were taboo to the ruck, who were required to report all finds to the gentry or the god-guards.
Now a globe came drifting down the corridor, and Revel got quickly to work, prying coal from a vein with his pick. The thing passed him, flicking his mind lightly with its own, and went on to the end of the tunnel. He watched it from the tail of his eye. Its glow brightened with interest; it shifted back and forth before the rampart of rocks.
They hadn't kept a tight enough check on their excitement yesterday! The globes could sense emotions long after the man who'd had them left a spot, and if the emotion were anger or grief or strong excitement, the globes could detect their residue as much as forty-eight hours later.
The thing floated back to them, briskly now, and ordered Revel telepathically to pull down some of the rocks at the end.
He eyed it coolly, his various brains walled with the protective screen that he had learned to erect between his thoughts and the outside world. This screen was made of shallow ideas, humdrum speculations on prosaic things—the last woman he'd had, the good feeling he got from working this rich vein of coal after some days of poor luck, even (to make the god think it was hearing secret desires) a wish that he might taste the wine that the gentry drank. He could throw up the screen and forget it, using his core of brains for serious plans.
A dozen rocks displaced, he thought, and we're doomed. For not telling the gods about the cave, he and Jerran would be given to the squires for the next big hunt.
So, without much hope of living through the next minute, but believing it was the only thing he could do now, he shoved Jerran to one side, raised his pick and slammed it with all his might into the center of the small, gold, eight-tentacled sphere.
And Revel had killed a god!
The feel of the pick slashing through it told him that: it was like hitting an overripe melon. The globe recoiled, dragged itself off the pick, and sank toward the floor, wobbling and dripping yellow ooze, with its aura of energy fading quickly into air. Jerran said quietly, "No others in sight. We're lucky!" and began to make a hole in a pile of discarded rocks. "Help me hide it, Revel."
"You can't hide it," he said dully. "They're telepathic, after all. It must have signaled its consorts."
"They can't hear or send messages through rock," said Jerran, working away. Revel automatically started to help him.
"How do you know?"
"We've proved it."
Revel heard the phrase, wondered who "we" might be; but so much had happened in the last seconds that he did not question Jerran. He couldn't absorb all the shattering facts. A man could not only touch a god, he could murder it! The gods were not all-powerful, for they could not perform telepathy if rock were in the way. Truly it was a morning of wonders. The world was falling around him.
He stared at the limp corpse of the globe. The tentacles were already shriveling up, the emanation of energy that surrounded the living orbs was gone. He bent, sniffed; no odor. He peered at it keenly, in the soft blue light of the mine's lanterns, then straightened.
A hand fell on his shoulder.
He spun on one heel, the pick arcing round to gut whoever was behind him. He had a glimpse of a short red beard and a popping walleye, and stopped his whirl by an instantaneous checking of his whole muscular system. The pick's point, still splattered with god's gore, was nudging his brother's belly.
"Nobody could have halted such a swing but you, Revel," said Rack absently. His good eye, ice blue and sharp as a bone needle, was fixed on the dead globe. "What happened?"
"An accident," said Jerran. "The god interposed itself between your brother's pick and the coal."
"That's right," said Revel. He had been lying to his brother for years, but he never grew reconciled to it; still, Rack was a man with but one brain, and that one servile and obedient to every whim of the gentry, the priests, the gods. So he had to be lied to.
Rack brought his gaze to Revel's tense face. "I got in the way of your pick," he said heavily. "You have the keenest nerves, the strongest body in the mines. This was no accident."
Revel began to grow cold in the head and the bowels. If Rack was convinced that he'd slain the god on purpose, then he'd report him. The religion that held the world so tightly was greater than any family bonds. He looked up at Rack. The man was a giant towering four inches over Revel's six feet one, and sixty pounds heavier. Rack's eyes were blue and white, Revel's lustrous brown; the elder's hair and beard were flame-colored, the younger had a sleek chocolate-brown thatch with a hint of rich black in its sheen, and was clean-shaven.
I'd hate to kill you, big man, thought Revel, but if I must, to save my neck, I will.
Jerran thrust his pick under the flaccid corpse and tossed it with one quick motion into the hole. He piled rocks on it, as Revel stamped the yellow ichor out thin and stringy, spread rock dust and jetty coal fragments over it till no sign of the murder remained.
"I'll report it," said Rack, apparently making up his mind.
"Then I'll say you did it," snapped Jerran, turning on him like a mouse baiting a bear. "What chance would you stand in the temple against me, whose cousin serves in the mansion of Ewyo of Dolfya?"
It was true, Jerran was slightly higher in the ruck than the brothers, being related to a servant of the gentry. Revel hoped Rack would be scared off by the threat. He had become perfectly cold now and could in the blinking of an eyelash bury his pick in Rack's head, but he didn't want to do it.
When Rack said nothing, Revel spoke. "Brother, agree to hold your tongue, or by Orb, I'll cut you down where you stand!"
Rack glanced at his own pick. "You could do it," he acknowledged. "You're fast enough. All right. I promise." He turned to his work stolidly; only Revel could see that he was blazing with anger.
The three began to dig coal from the wall. Revel kept glancing at the small Jerran. What was there to the man that he had never suspected? How did he know that globes were stymied by rock? Why had he taken the death of the god so lightly?
What was Jerran, anyhow?
The squire has gathered all his kin,To hunt the fox so sly;'Tis not a beast with paws and brush,But a man like you or I!They hunt him down the thorny glen,And up the hillside dark;"O hear him gasp and hear him sob,Whenas our hounds do bark!"—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The squire has gathered all his kin,To hunt the fox so sly;'Tis not a beast with paws and brush,But a man like you or I!
They hunt him down the thorny glen,And up the hillside dark;"O hear him gasp and hear him sob,Whenas our hounds do bark!"
—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
When Revel was due for a rest space, he went through the blue-tinged dusk of the mine, cleaned his arms and face at the washers, scrubbing the coal dust from his big hands, and climbed the ladders, up and up, till day shone in his face.
He stood beneath the cross-beam of the entrance, sucking in clean air. The red and blue buttons shone in the sun; far down the valley a globe passed between trees, bent on some private business. Another floated by him into the mine; under it trotted a zanph, one of the ugly beasts, six-legged and furry with the head of a great snake, that followed the globes and sometimes attacked men on orders from the hovering gods.
Would the deities discover that one was missing? If they found the corpse, he and Jerran would be foxes for the gentry....
Revel was a man of the ruck. The ruck was millions and millions of souls, faceless, without rights; Revel had some little protection, more than most others, being a miner and therefore important to the gentry. The gentry numbered thousands, and they had many rights—owning great estates, lighting their homes with candles, drinking wine legally, keeping fierce dogs and going where they pleased on big wild horses. No man of the ruck could touch one of the gentry and live. The gentry, the squires who owned guns and hunted men three times a week, men called "foxes"—it was whispered in the illegal drinking huts, the shebeens, that the squires had once been members of the ruck. Above there were the priests, who had always from the dawn of time been of the priestcraft, being born a notch lower than the gods themselves, who were the golden globes.
"Our Orbs who dwell in the buttoned sky," said Revel aloud, and spat. Before that day he wouldn't have dared to think of such an action.
He walked out on the shelf of rock before the mine. Something moved at the far end of the valley, a brown and silver speck that swiftly became a horse and rider, rocketing toward him.
It was a girl, her silver gown pulled up to the tops of her thighs so she could sit astride; she appeared to be having trouble with her mount. Passing beneath Revel, swearing loudly at the plunging horse, she continued for a hundred feet, then fell in a swirl of silver cloth as the brute reared.
Revel leaped down the rock shelf as the horse cantered away. He ran to the girl, who lay flat on her back, long white legs bared below the disordered gown. She was blonde, tall, beautifully slicked. No rucker wore such clothing, or rode a bay stallion, much less looked so groomed and cleanly; she was a squire's daughter.
As he bent down she opened eyes the shade of sunlight on gray slate.
"Lie still," he said, "you may have broken something, Lady."
Her face was scornful. "Stand back, miner," she said, recognizing his trade from the distinctive clothing he wore "Death to you if you touch me."
A confusion of emotions was rioting in him. So much had happened today—too much for sanity. He surrendered to madness gladly. This was the most perfect wench he had ever seen. "Shut up," he said, and ran his fingers over her body. "We of the ruck are expert at mending things, Lady: bones, pots, and lives. Orbs know, you gentry have busted enough of 'em for us. That hurt?"
She sat up, brushing her gown to her ankles as Revel took a last wistful look at her legs. Evidently she was quite unhurt. "You'll play fox for my father's hunt," she said coldly. "What made you do it?"
"You took a bad fall," he said lightly, wondering at his lack of fear. Never before had he touched a squire's woman. She felt as all women feel, her high caste couldn't be sensed in her body. "I'd sit still a moment, if I were you." It must be the killing of the globe, he thought; after that, any crime is possible.
"Who are you?"
"A miner," he mocked, standing. His pick was in his hand, as ever. He thought, Should I kill her too? No sense to that, when I was only trying to help. Or was it her body I wanted to touch? "Who's your father?"
"Ewyo of Dolfya, and his hounds will eat you for breakfast tomorrow."
Ewyo was one of the richest squires in this part of the world, and Jerran's cousin served him. "You're Lady Nirea, then. A fine-looking wench."
"My Orbs," she gasped, her scorn rattled by his incredible insolence. "My Orbs above, who are you?"
"A dirty miner, who puts coal into your father's hearth but must warm himself over smoldering peat. Why would you report me?"
"Youscum," she said, the snarling hiss of a zanph in her voice. "Do you remember when a brewer fell over a dog in Dolfya last year and bumped my sister Jann? He was hunted over twelve miles before the pack tore him to blood and rags! What do you thinkyoudeserve, who dares address me in that way, and—and fondle me?"
"Lady Nirea, if I fondled you, you'd know it," Revel said. Then, seeing the hint of a smile on her sensuous lips, he looked up, for she seemed to be staring over his shoulder.
From the button above them a line of globes dropped, golden globules radiating bright energy.
Whom the gods destroy, they first madden.That was part of the Globate Credo, wasn't it? Well, Revel had been gradually made mad that day, and now, by Orbs, he'd show them something before he was destroyed!
As the first descended past him, and wrapped two tentacles under the girl's armpits to lift her, he lifted his pick to smack it as he had the supervising deity in the mine. He felt a tug; another globe had a whiplash arm around his pick. Gritting teeth, he threw his tremendous brawn into a swing, and the pick tore loose from the tentacle and sprayed the guts out of the sphere before him. It fell on the grass beside Nirea, an emptying sack. He slashed a second and a third, laughing between set lips. What a way to go down—killing gods!
Then he felt a searing pain, a sudden spasm of the flesh, as though a sword had been heated in a bonfire and laid alongside his ear. Reflectively he ducked to earth, sprang two steps forward and spun, rising to his full height again. One of the bulbous brutes had touched the side of his head, its energy aura so strong at that close contact that the hair was burned to a char and the flesh scorched.
So they could really hurt a man! He grinned with pain and defiance. If his pick wasn't as fast as any damned floating ball, let them kill him! He waited, crouched, keeping his eyes on them; and then they were rising again, leaving him there in the valley with a screaming girl in a silver gown.
Jerran, who had just started his own rest space, evidently, appeared on the rock shelf and came down, walking faster than Revel had ever seen him go. The little man came to him and, hardly glancing at Lady Nirea, said, "Were you attacked, lad?"
"I did the attacking, when they objected to my touching this wench."
Jerran gazed up. "They're spreading out. The gentry will soon be on you, Revel. You've got to hide."
"Where can you hide from a god?" It wasn't a hopeless tone he used, but a kind of laughing, bantering acceptance of his doom.
"Come off it," said Jerran urgently. "You're still thinking like a rucker."
"I am of the ruck."
"You're a rebel now, you fool! Think like one! Listen:a man cannot kill a god."
"The Globate Credo," grunted Revel. "Our Orbs are everlasting, untouchable.Crud! I've killed four today."
"Right. So stop fearing them and thinking they're omnipotent.Our Orbs see all we do.More crud, lad! They're telepathic, adept at hypnosis, but rock stops 'em. Get rock above you and you are safe for a while, till I can think this over and get you some help."
"The mine!" Revel barked; to his madness, his exhilaration, was added hope. "The secret cave, Jerran!"
"And of course," said Jerran wryly, "you have to take the woman."
Revel's jaw dropped. "Why?"
"You idiot, she just heard you say about six words too many. She'd lead her father's pack straight to us!" Jerran evidently knew the Lady Nirea by sight. "She knows our names, too. It's either take her or kill her." His flinty eyes creased up. "Better kill her, at that. Less danger."
Revel looked at her. The talk of murder didn't turn a hair of that flawlessly-wrought coiffure: she was either too sure of the gentry's power, or too stunned by the gods' death, to be consciously frightened.
She was not stunned, for now she said, "You rabbit-brains, you filthy grubbers, you must have lost whatever wits a rucker has. My father will really think up something f—"
"Damn your father," said Jerran. "He eats dandelions."
"He doesn't!"
"My cousin gathers them for the old hellion," nodded Jerran. "I ought to know. Revel, have any of those bulbous bubbles gone into the mine, that you noticed?"
"Not yet, I've been watching."
"Good. Then get going. I'll take care of the wench."
Revel saw her lips curl slightly; she didn't believe she could be hurt, even though she had a moment before been screaming at the death of her gods. She was brave, or stupid, or very confident of her untouchability. He glanced down over her body, squeezed tight by the silver gown. Her breasts were fuller and higher than a ruck girl's, her limbs unbunched with muscles, smooth and lovely.
"No, she doesn't die," he said. "Not unless I do." He bent and picked her up and ran with her toward the entrance of the mine.
The Mink he couches underground,Beneath the earth he lies;He hears the fox's mournful yell,And knows he must arise."Too many lads have hunted been,Too many women slain!"The Mink he takes his pick in handTo end the gentry's reign.—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The Mink he couches underground,Beneath the earth he lies;He hears the fox's mournful yell,And knows he must arise.
"Too many lads have hunted been,Too many women slain!"The Mink he takes his pick in handTo end the gentry's reign.
—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The Lady Nirea thought a moment—she never attacked any new problem without thinking beforehand—and then she began to struggle. This rucker who had her over his shoulder, with a death-grip on her legs and her head hanging down his back, was plainly insane. No man of his low position waseverinsane enough to actually harm a squire's daughter; so if she kicked and bit, he would either drop her or—
Well, it was the "or." He reached up and slapped her on the rear. Hard. She opened her eyes wide. No one had ever before dared to touch her there. She thought again, and bit him on the side.
He was carrying her up the rocks toward the mine now. Surely there would be a god-guard on duty there? She had often seen one in place at the entrance, as she rode through the valley. Yes, peering upside-down under his arm, she saw the golden glow. Then he was shifting her a little, setting his muscles, and—great Orbs! He struck the god full in the middle with his miner's pick. This man, this astounding brute with chocolate-colored hair and a body like a wild woods lion, had dared kill four gods in as many minutes. Perhaps she shouldn't be as certain of her inviolability as she'd been till now.
"You triple-damn fool," she said, making her voice husky so it wouldn't squeak, "the globes are watching."
"They always are." What a strong voice the beast had.
"They see you going into the mine. D'you think you're safe here?"
"Where I'm going, there's a chance," he said. His body moved lithely beneath her. She clutched him around the ribs as they began to descend a ladder. Blackness, tinged with blue, lay below. She felt her scalp prickle with terror.
The little man, Jerran, said from somewhere above, "Kill all the gods we meet, lad; I'll hide or bring the bodies. And keep your emotions controlled, or they'll follow our scent like zanphs on the trail of a runaway."
"Did the globes follow us?" asked the big man, whose name was Rebel or something like it.
"They were coming down again as I ducked in. Hurry it up."
The swift plunge into the mine speeded. She deliberately worked herself up to silent panic, giving the gods a spoor to chase.
Now they were traveling on the level, and from the reflection of yellow, the brisk jerk of his arm, and the pulpy squish, she knew he had met and slain another globe. Was he inhuman, a visitor from beyond the world, such as were told of in the ancient ballads? Certainly no man was ever this bold!
"Here's the end," said Jerran. "Set the wench down, she can't get away. Hurry!"
She was rudely plumped onto a pile of coal. She looked at her silver gown and shuddered. Her flailing legs had ripped it from hem to midthigh; the coal was staining it irrevocably.
"When I catch that horse," she thought, half aloud, "I'll beat him. Tossing me into all this!"
They were pulling down rocks from the wall; now a black hole appeared. The small man jumped up to a boulder and snatched down a blue mine lantern. "Take this, Revel." That was it, Revel. An odd name, a rather nice one. The ruck ordinarily had such awful names, Jark and Dack and Orp. Revel. Not bad. It fitted the big lusty-looking brute.
He came over. "Never mind picking me up," she said icily. "I can walk." She peered into the hole, winced, and clambering over the rocks, losing a heel from one of her slippers, she entered their secret cavern.
Revel climbed in after her. Jerran was already piling rocks back into the breach. The lantern looked faint and incapable of lighting a chimney corner, but its blue radiance was deceptive, for the farthest reaches of the place were cast into a moonlight sort of glow. She gazed around, unable to take it in, seeing nothing at first but giant shapes of mystery, unknown things in stacks and in tumbled heaps, figures like grotesque statues, all lined in rows the length and breadth of the giant cavern.
The cave itself was square, perhaps a hundred feet to a side. It must have taken scores of miners months of work to hew it out of the rock. Unwilling to show interest, she still had to ask, "When did you make this?"
"We didn't make it, Lady. We found it. No man alive made this place."
"How do you know?"
"The miners would know it. We broke through the wall only yesterday."
"What are these things?"
"You know as much as I do." He was looking at her in the way her father sometimes looked at rucker serving women, as though she had no clothes on at all. She had little modesty, society was lax when it came to such things as clothing, and frequently she had ridden the streets of Dolfya Town in a suit of transparent silk that made the ruck gape and blush; but this very personal scrutiny made her shield her breasts with one arm as she stared back at him.
"I've changed my mind about you," she said pleasantly.
"Yes?" Did the swine look eager?
"I have ... you won't be hunted by the pack. You'll be flayed alive, inch by inch, with white-hot needles of iron, starting with your feet and working upward. And I'll watch."
He laughed. "Youarea wench," he said admiringly. Then he turned and appeared to forget her as he began to inspect the contents of the cavern. After a moment she wandered off to look at them herself.
Nearest lay a long wooden chest, on which were arranged certain contrivances that looked like guns, except that they were short, no more than a foot long; they had triggers and barrels and small curved stocks, so they must be guns! No one had ever seen a gun under four feet long. She looked for the ramrods, but there were none on the chest. Possibly they were cached inside it.
Over the chest in an arch that covered the entire top was a sheet of almost invisible stuff that she touched fearfully. She had never seen anything like it—like frozen water! Hard and cold ... She thought of the oiled paper in her father's windows. A sheet of this substance in a window would be a magnificent possession, the envy of every squire in Dolfya. Oiled paper was semi-transparent, while this stuff was like a piece of air.
There was a white square lying beside the tiny guns, with black printing on it. She was deciphering it, painfully, for not only did she read very slowly, even in the priceless old books of her father's library, but this print was in a language slightly different from Orbish, when she felt two hard hands on her waist.
"Get your stinking paws off me," she said, without moving.
She was picked up and set down gently on one side. Revel bent over the chest.
"What are they?"
She thought fast. She had deciphered enough of the card to know theywereguns:American handguns of 1940-1975 period, it said. She couldn't let him know it. The rucker must not get hold of a gun, or he'd attack the gentry themselves, for hadn't he slain innumerable gods already?
"They are children's toys," she said. "I don't know what sort of children would be interested in such weird-looking things."
"Did you ever hear of the Ancient Kingdom?"
She shook her head; the term was new to her.
"The ruck knows of it; the ballad-singers have many sagas of the Ancient Kingdom, but I imagine the gentry have forgotten. It was the world and people of a long time ago. I think these things were walled up here then." His face, really a handsome face if you forgot he was a rucker, screwed up in thought. Then he started to chant something.
"The people of that far-off time,They carried little guns;They had so much more freedomThan we who are their sons."
"The people of that far-off time,They carried little guns;They had so much more freedomThan we who are their sons."
He stared at the weapons. She thought fast. "These are toy guns, yes. The writing says they are guns for children."
"Maybe the toys of those children worked," he said looking at her.
"You talk nonsense."
He felt the transparent stuff over the chest, pushed on it hard, then raised his pick and struck the stuff a heavy blow. It shattered into bright daggers and fell on the guns and on the floor. Picking one of the small things from its place, he examined it closely.
"No toy, Lady Nirea," he grunted. "You lied to me."
"I didn't! Canyouread the writing?" she asked sourly.
"No rucker reads, as you know. But this is no toy, and you knew it." He tucked it into the waistband of his trousers, took three more. "You can show me how to use them later."
She laughed in his face and was given a rough slap on the cheek. Skin tingling, she said, "Play the squire, miner, you don't have long to do it!"
"They won't find this hole."
"I left a trail of emotion that a globe could follow after a week!" she told him.
Slowly his brown face turned pale. Then he struck her again, but very hard, so that she staggered back and fell. Without a word he grasped her wrist and hauled her after him on a swift tour of the cavern.
A huge intricate mechanism sat like a grotesque idol on the floor. "What is it?" he said. "Read for me."
She looked at the printing on the front.Dynamoshe spelt out, and shrugged. "A name I don't know."
"If you lie to me again, I'll rip that gown off and strangle you with it." He obviously meant it. She said sullenly, "I'm not lying."
"I know you aren't, now. I have an instinct for lies." He dragged her on. "What's this?"
The language was very like Orbish, yet subtly different, and the words were mostly strange. She said aloud, in syllables, "Man of the 21st century: John R. Klapham, atomic physicist and—"
"Never mind." He left the big shining case, which was oblong and featureless and seemed made of metal, to pass to something else. Her gaze caught another line on the card as she was pulled away:Held in suspended animation.What could the words mean?
They covered the big cave, finding almost nothing they could understand. Here and there were ordinary objects—plates, hides of animals under the near-invisible arches of wondrous material, arrows such as the ruck vagabonds used for shooting birds, candles—but in the main it was a place of mystery.
"The people of the Ancient Kingdom," he said, rubbing his square chin, "put these things into the earth for a purpose. I don't know what it could have been, but I want Jerran to look at them. He's got any number of keen brains."
"Nobody has more than one brain," she snapped.
He grinned. "I have six or eight myself," he said. The creature was totally crazy. He was staring at her again in that lewd way. Now he put a hand on her shoulder. The touch sent hot tingling sensations through her body. The fact that he was of the ruck and no higher than an animal, that he was a god-killer, paled before the desire his great body roused in her. She moved a step toward him, all-but-voluntarily.
His brown eyes lit up. His arm was around her waist, and his lips came near her own. Deep-bred habit made her draw back, but she could not fight the instinct that racked her.
It's a strange place for passion, she thought dazedly; an unknown cavern, full of antique wonders never heard of on earth, filled with a blue haze, and only she and the tall fierce rucker....
The Mink has come to the bright sun's light,His pick is lifted high;He hears the gentry's whooping yell,And sees them gallop by."Now all too long we've felt the yoke,And cringed and fawned and died!'Tis time we turned upon the squire,To skin his rotten hide!"—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
The Mink has come to the bright sun's light,His pick is lifted high;He hears the gentry's whooping yell,And sees them gallop by.
"Now all too long we've felt the yoke,And cringed and fawned and died!'Tis time we turned upon the squire,To skin his rotten hide!"
—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
Revel was sitting beside the hole in the wall, now filled with rocks, of course; he had replaced the four small guns in his belt and found, by breaking open the chest they'd lain on, a number of boxes of ammunition, with which he'd stuffed his pockets. Experiment had shown him how to load, and tradition of the ruck told him that to shoot, one pointed the end at something (or someone, he told himself grimly) and pulled the small curved projection. The woman should have helped him, but she was sulking in a corner, weeping. She had not wept an hour before!
He wondered if he were the first rucker to hold a gun. Surely the first to have four such tiny weapons, at least.
He heard voices from beyond the wall, filtering in, oddly distorted, through the air spaces between rocks. That was Jerran.
"Yes, he came down here, and threatened me with his pick all dripping yellow, said he'd killed a lot of gods. Crazy, that's what he was!" Jerran's voice broke, a neat bit of acting. "Sure there's an emotion trail! You think I wasn't scared of that maniac? Wasn't he excited? He stayed here a minute and then left again."
That was clever. Jerran had explained away the psychic scent left by the Lady Nirea. He must be talking to a god. But another voice spoke now, and Revel sat up, thinking, The gods don't make sounds!
"Was there a girl with him, a girl of the gentry in a silver gown?"
"No, Lord Ewyo—" it was her father, then!—"he was alone."
"He may have hidden her body somewhere," said a heavy voice. Rack, by the Orbs, Revel's brother Rack! "He's turned violent today."
"I understand he's your brother?" said Ewyo.
"Aye. A strong violent man, but worse today than ever he's been."
"No rucker would dare harm Lady Nirea," whined Jerran.
"No rucker should dared have touched her," barked the squire. Then, his voice respectful, he asked, "Can you tell me if she's dead, priest?"
There was a croak like a bull-frog's, a chugarum with words in it. "She lives."
"Where?"
Revel sucked in his breath. If the priest could see all, as they'd been taught, he was doomed. Then, before any other voices beyond the wall could speak, Nirea—he had been a muddleheaded and drooling fool not to seal her mouth—Nirea screamed. "In here, father! Tear down the barricades!"
Revel was on her in two bounds and hit her a crack on the jaw, a vicious blow that sprawled her into a pile of clay tablets (inscribed with writing she had refused to read to him), dead to the world. Then Revel was at the hole, waiting tensely with a gun in his hand.
"What can lie in the rocks?" he heard Jerran say. "The voice was a ghost's."
"Hold your tongue," roared Ewyo. "You'll make a fox for the hunt, small yellow man!"
A gap appeared. "Look in there," said Ewyo, and a head came thrusting in, the head of a squire's servant topped with the distinctive peaked cap and green ear flaps. Revel could not shoot a rucker. He hit the man full in the mouth, and the head disappeared with a howl.
"Tear them down, he's in there. We'll let the zanphs harry him a bit," said Ewyo. "Hear that, rebel?"
"Send in your zanphs," yelled Revel, grinning. "Let 'em come in, squire!"
The gap grew. Up over the rocks charged a zanph, its six legs scrabbling frantically, its snake's head darting back and forth to search him out. He let it see him and utter its war cry, a hiss that became a growl. Then he pointed the gun's muzzle at its face and calmly pulled the curved metal below the barrel. There was a crash as of a mountain falling; dust rained on him from the roof, echoes raged together; and the zanph, its skull fragmented all over four yards of floor, sank to the furred belly and slowly rolled over.
"Send me a globe!" roared Revel, delirious with glee. "Send me a god, Ewyo!"