IX
He checked his stride. Chattering brown people thronged by, forcing him off the trailstreet and onto a detritus slope. After some while, he realized he was staring past the stone wall which kept these rocks off terraces below, downward to an ore processing plant. Its stack drooled yellow smoke, as if ambitious to be a volcano too. Nothing about it merited Flandry’s unbroken attention.
Well, he thought in a dull and remote fashion, I still haven’t had my breakfast.
He began trudging over the scree, paralleling the trail but in no mood to go back and jostle his way along it. The downslope on the other side of the low wall became steeper as he went, until it was a cliff dropping fifty meters to the next level of dwellings. Stones scrunched underfoot. The mountain filled half his world with black massiveness, the other half was sky.
His first dismay—and, yes, he might as well admit it, his shock of pity for Luang and loneliness for himself—had receded enough for him to start calculating. Trouble was, he lacked data. If the girl had simply blown a gasket when he touched some unsuspected nerve, that was one thing. He might even use the reconciliation to advance his argument again, about escaping from Unan Besar. But if she had dropped him for good and all, he was in a bad situation. He couldn’t guess if she had or not. A man thought he understood women, more or less, and then somebody like Luang showed up.
Of course, if the worst comes to the worst—but that’s just what it’s likely to do—
Hoy! What’s this?
Flandry stopped. Another man had left the trail and was walking across the slope. A boy, rather: couldn’t be more than sixteen, with so round a face and slender a body. He looked as if he hadn’t eaten lately and had hocked everything but his kilt. Yet that was of shimmery velvety cloth, not cheap at all. Odd.
Something about his blind purposefulness jabbed understanding into Flandry. The Terran began to run. The boy sprang up on the wall. He stood there a moment, gazing into the wan sky of Unan Besar. Sunlight flooded across him. Then he jumped.
Flandry did a belly whopper across the wall and caught an ankle. He almost went over too. “Oof!” he said, and lay draped with the boy squirming and swinging at the end of his arm. When his breath returned, he hauled his burden back over and dumped it on the ground. The boy gave one enormous shudder and passed out.
A crowd was gathering, quite agog. “All right,” panted Flandry, “all right, the show’s over. I thank you for your kind attention. Anyone who wishes to pass the hat is free to do so.” A Guard shoved through. No mistaking that green kilt and medallion, the knife and club, or the built-in swagger.
“What’s this?” he said, in the manner of policemen the universe over.
“Nothing,” said Flandry. “The boy got a little reckless and nearly had an accident.”
“So? Looked to me as if he jumped.”
“Only a game. Boys,” said Flandry with sparkling wit, “will be boys.”
“If he’s contracted or enslaved, suicide would be an evasion of obligations and attempted suicide would rate a flogging.”
“No, he’s free. I know him, Guardsman.”
“Even a free man has no right to jump within city limits. He might have hit somebody underneath him. He’d have made a mess for someone to clean up, that’s certain. Both of you come with me now, and we’ll look into this.”
Flandry’s spine tingled. If he got himself arrested on so much as a malicious mopery charge, that was the end of the party. He smiled and reached inside his kilt pocket. “I swear it was only a near accident, Guardsman,” he said. “And I’m a busy man.” He extracted one of his purses. “I haven’t time to argue this officially. Why don’t you . . . ah . . . take ten silvers and go settle any claims there may be? It would be so much easier all around.”
“What? Do you mean—”
“Quite right. The aggrieved parties ought to have at least two goldens between them. You know this city, Guardsman, and I’m a newcomer. You can find who deserves the payment. I beg you, do not burden my soul with debts I cannot settle.” Flandry thrust the coins into his hand.
“Ah. Ah, yes.” The Guard nodded. “Yes, it would be best that way, wouldn’t it? Seeing that no actual damage was done.”
“I am always pleased to meet a man of discretion.” Flandry bowed. The Guard bowed. They parted with murmurs of mutual esteem. The crowd lost interest and continued on its various ways. Flandry knelt beside the boy, who was coming to, and cradled the dark head in his arms.
“Take it easy, son,” he advised.
“Oa-he, tuan, why did you stop me?” A shaken whisper. “Now I must nerve myself all over again.”
“Ridiculous project,” snorted Flandry. “Here, can you get up? Lean on me.”
The boy staggered to his feet. Flandry supported him. “When was your last meal?” he inquired.
“I don’t remember.” The boy knuckled his eyes, like a small child.
“Well, I was on my way to breakfast, which by now is more like luncheon. Come join me.”
The thin body stiffened. “A man of Ranau takes no beggar’s wage.”
“I’m not offering charity, you gruntbrain. I want to feed you so you can talk rationally, which is the only way I can learn whether you’re the person I want to hire for a certain job.”
Flandry looked away from the sudden, bitterly resisted tears. “Come!” he snapped. His guess had been right, the youngster was out of work and starving. A stranger to this area: obviously so, from the intricate foreign pattern of his batik and from his dialect. Well, an outlander might prove of some use to a stranded Imperialist.
A tea house wasn’t far off. At this sunny time of day, most of its customers sat on a ledge outside beneath giant red parasols, and looked down on a ravine full of clouds. Flandry and the boy took cushions at one table. “Tea with a jug of arrack to lace it,” Flandry told the waiter. “And two of your best rijstaffels.”
“Two, sir?”
“To begin with, anyhow.” Flandry offered the boy a cigarette. It was refused. “What’s your name, younker?”
“Djuanda, son of Tembesi, who is chief ecologist on the Tree Where the Ketjils Nest, which is in Ranau.” The head bowed above folded hands. “You are kind to a stranger, tuan.”
“I’m one myself.” Flandry lit his own tobacco and reached for his tea cup as it arrived. “From, ah, Pegunungan Gradjugang, across the Tindjil Ocean. Name’s Dominic. I came here in hopes of my fortune.”
“Half the world does, I think.” Djuanda slurped his tea in the approved Pulaoic manner. His voice had strengthened already, which underlined the anger in it. “So half the world are fools.”
“Commoners have become rich men here, I am told.”
“One in a million, perhaps . . . for a while . . . until he loses it to a cheat. But the rest? They rot their lungs in the mines, and their wives and children cough like amphibians in the rice paddies, and at the end they are so far in debt they must become slaves. Oh, tuan, the sun hates Gunung Utara!”
“What brought you, then?”
Djuanda sighed. “I thought the Trees of Ranau were not high enough.”
“Eh?”
“I mean . . . it is a saying of my folk. A tree which grows too high will topple at last. Surulangun Ridge is the earth-buried bole of such a tree. It fell a thousand years ago, three hundred meters tall, and the forest still bears the scars of its falling, and the Ridge is still hot from its slow decay. The old people made a parable of it, and told us not to strive beyond reason. But I always thought—how splendid the great tree must have been while it lived!”
“So you ran away from home?”
Djuanda looked at the fists clenched in his lap. “Yes. I had a little money, from my share of our trade with outland merchants. It got me passage here. Tuan, believe I never scorned my folk. I only thought they were too stiff in their ways. Surely modern engineering skills could be of value to us. We might build better houses, for example. And we ought to start industries which would bring more cash money to Ranau, so we could buy more of what the merchants offered—not merely toys and baubles, but better tools. This I told my father, but he would not hear of it, and at last I departed without his blessing.”
Djuanda glanced up again, anxious to justify himself. “Oh, I was not altogether foolish, tuan. I had written to the mine chiefs here, offering myself as an engineer apprentice. One of them had written back, agreeing to give me a position. I knew it would be humble, but I could learn in it. So I thought.”
“Have a drink,” said Flandry, sloshing arrack into his guest’s cup. “What happened?”
Djuanda demurred. It took several minutes and numerous sips of the now high-octane tea before he broke down and admitted he’d been played for a sucker. The job was as advertised—but he had to buy equipment like respirators out of the company slop chest, at a staggering markup. Before long he was in debt. Someone took him out on a bender to forget his troubles, and steered him into a clip joint. What with one thing and another, Djuanda lost what he had, borrowed from a loan shark to recoup, lost that too, and finally faced the prospect of crawling back to the loan shark to borrow ten silvers for his next pill.
“Couldn’t you write home for help?” Flandry asked.
The immature face grew stiff with pride. “I had defied my father’s will, tuan. In the hearing of all our Tree, I said I was now a man able to look after myself. Did I not at least make my own way home again, his dignity would suffer as much as mine. No. I found another eager young man, the gods be pitiful toward him, who wanted my position and could pay me somewhat for it. I sold all I owned. It was still not enough. I went to the dispenser and told him he could keep my last pill, recording it as issued to me, for fifty goldens. He would only give me five.” (Black market resale value, one hundred goldens, Flandry remembered. The poor rube from Ranau had had no concept of haggling.) “So I could not buy passage home. But at least I now had enough to clear my name from debt. I flung the coins in the moneylender’s face. Then for days I tried to find other work, any work, but it was only offered to me if I would become a slave. No man of Ranau has ever been a slave. I went forth at last to die honorably. But you came by, tuan. So I suppose the gods do not want me yet,” finished Djuanda naively.
“I see.” To cover his own need for a thinking space, as well as the boy’s, Flandry raised his cup. “Confusion to moneylenders!”
“Damnation to Biocontrol,” said Djuanda, with a slight hiccough.
“What?” Flandry set down his own cup and stared.
“Nothing!” Fear rose in the dark liquid eyes. “Nothing, tuan! I said not a word!”
This might bear further investigation, Flandry thought with excitement. I was wondering what the hell to do about this lad—couldn’t have him tagging along with his big wet ears a-flap in the breeze—not when my scalp is still wanted—But this makes him, perhaps, a lucky find. The first I’ve heard who’s said anything against Biocontrol itself. He’s too young to have thought of it on his own. So . . . somewhere in his home town, at least one older person—probably more—has daydreamed about a revolution—
The soup arrived. Djuanda forgot his terrors in attacking it. Flandry poured more liquor and ate at a calmer pace. While they waited for the main course, he said conversationally, “I’ve never heard of Ranau. Tell me about it. . . .”
A rijstaffel, properly made, is a noble dish requiring a couple of hours to eat. Then there was sherbet, with more tea and arrack. And a pair of strolling dancers came up to earn a few coppers by entertaining the wealthy man. And another jug of arrack seemed indicated. And there was a never ending string of toasts to drink.
The white sun climbed to the zenith and toppled. Shadows rose under the mountain. When the sun went behind the crater, the sky was still blue, but it duskened rapidly and the evening star was kindled over eastern ridges. A low cold wind piped along ashen slopes, whipping the first streamers of cloud before it.
Flandry stood up, relieving cramped muscles in a giant yawn. “We’ll go back to my room,” he suggested. Djuanda, unhardened to drinking, gave him a blurry look. Flandry laughed and tossed the boy his cloak. “Here, better put this on. You look as if you can stand an overnight nap. We’ll talk further after sunrise.” It seemed as good a way as any of putting Djuanda on the shelf while he assessed his own situation with respect to Luang. (And to Kemul. Never forget those enormous strangler’s hands.) Alcohol glowed along Flandry’s veins, but his new confidence could also be justified logically. If Luang had indeed decided to hate him—or even if she remained too stubborn about an escape attempt—Djuanda offered a ready-made entree to Ranau. What hints he had gotten suggested to Flandry that Ranau could prove useful. Very useful, perhaps.
Below the retaining wall, where shadows had already engulfed the slopes, lamps were twinkling to life. But fog rose up, to blur and finally smother those tiny strewn stars. Flandry guided a somewhat wobbly Djuanda, who sang songs, up the sharp trail toward the Inn of the Nine Serpents. Having negotiated the last ladder and crossed the terrace, he went down the fumarole to his door. It had an ancient type of lock, he must grope for his key . . . no, wait, it wasn’t locked after all, so his companions must be in there expecting his return. . . . With a split second’s hesitation, Flandry opened the door and stepped through.
Two green-kilted men snatched at his arms. Across the chamber, Flandry saw a dozen more. Kemul and Luang sat with ankles lashed together. Flandry got one look at the girl’s face turned toward his. “Get out!” he heard her scream. A Guard smacked his stick against her temple. She sagged into Kemul’s lap. The mugger roared.
Nias Warouw leaned against the farther wall, smoking an outplanet cigarette and smiling.
Flandry had barely glimpsed the men closing in on either side. His reaction was too fast for thought. Spinning on his heel, he drove stiff-held fingers into the throat before him. It was one way to break your hand, unless you struck your enemy with a vector precisely normal to the skin. Flandry opened the throat and tore the windpipe across.
The other man was upon his back. Arms closed around the Terran’s neck. Flandry’s head was already down, chin protecting larynx. He dropped straight through the hug, hit the floor and rolled over.
The Guard backed into the doorway. His knife gleamed forth. The rest of Warouw’s troop stalked closer, their own blades drawn.
Flandry bounced to his feet, reached in his shirt, and yanked out the pistol he had captured.
He didn’t waste his breath crowing. Not when knives and clubs could be hurled from every side. He shot.
Four men went down in as many explosions. The others milled back. Flandry’s eyes searched through a reeking haze of cordite. Where was their chief now—? Warouw looked out from behind one of the rough pillars upholding the ceiling. Still he smiled. Flandry fired and missed. Warouw’s right hand emerged, with a modern Betelgeusean blaster.
Flandry didn’t stop for heroics. He didn’t even stop to make a conscious decision. His chance of hitting Warouw with his own clumsy weapon was negligible. A single wide-beam low-energy blaster shot couldn’t possibly miss. It would roll him screaming on the floor. Later, if he wanted to take the trouble, Warouw could have his seared prisoner treated in some hospital.
The Guard at the door was down with a slug in his chest. The door stood open. Flandry went through it.
As he burst out on the terrace again, Warouw was close behind. The rest of the Guards swarmed shouting in their wake. The dusk was cool and blue, almost palpable, surrounding all things and drowning them. Mist and smoke hung in it. Flandry bounded down the ladder to the trailstreet.
There went a rumbling through air and earth. Briefly, flame gushed in the sky. From an open doorway came the sound of crockery falling and smashing; a woman ran out with a scream. Flandry glimpsed several men halted in their tracks, looking up toward the crater. Their bodies were shadows in this vague twilight, but the gleam of a lamp touched white eyeballs. Further down the trail, the barely visible mass of the crowds had stopped seething. Their mutter lifted between black walls.
Gunung Utara was angry.
Warouw paused only an instant at the foot of the ladder. Then a flashbeam sprang from his left hand and speared Flandry. The Terran whirled, dashed from the light, over the pebbles to the retaining wall. He heard footfalls rattle behind him.
At this point, he remembered, the downslope beyond the wall was steep and rugged. He made out a boulder, and leaped from the wall to its top. Another shock went through the ground. The boulder stirred beneath him and he heard lesser stones grind valleyward. Warouw’s flash darted from the wall, here, there, hunting him. Where to go? He could see naught but darkness and thickening fogs. No, wait . . . was that another jut of rock, two meters away? No time to wonder. He sprang. Almost, he missed, and heard below him the shifting of debris which would cut his feet to rags if he landed in it. He grasped an invisible roughness, pulled himself up on top of the crag, spied another mass below him, and jumped to that.
Warouw’s light bobbed in pursuit.
Flandry realized he was cutting across town. He didn’t know how long he sprang from coign to coign. It was all mist and darkness. Somehow he crossed another safety wall, landed on a terrace, scrambled to the trail beneath, and sped among emptied caves.
Panther to his mountain goat, Warouw followed. Once in a while, for a fractional second, his light picked out the Terran.
Then Flandry was beyond the city. The trail petered out. He ran across a bare slope, over black cinders and among crags like tall ghosts.
He could just see how sharply the ground rose on his left, almost a cliff, up to the crater rim. Gunung Utara thundered. Flandry felt the noise in his teeth and marrow. Cinders shifted, dust filled his nostrils. Somewhere a boulder went hurtling and bouncing down toward the valley. Smoke boiled from the crater, a solid column three kilometers high, lit from beneath with dull flickering red.
Flandry looked back. The flashbeam jiggled in a gloom where streamers of mist seemed to glow white. He lurched onward. A few times he stumbled, teetered on the uneasy slope, and heard a roar as the scree slid downward. No use heading that way, unless he wanted to die in chunks. He sobbed for air, his lungs were twin deserts and his gullet afire.
A sheer wall rose before him. He ran into it and stared stupidly for seconds before he comprehended. The magma dyke. Yes. Yes, that was it. Must be some way up . . . here, a ladder, iron rungs set into the concrete. . . .
He stood on a railed platform and looked down into the channel. The molten rock threw gusts of heat and poison gas at him. It growled and glowed, ember colored, but he thought he could see tiny flames sheet back and forth across its current. If he wasn’t crazy. If he wasn’t dreaming.
There was no way to go from here. No bridge, no catwalk to the other side. Not even a flat top on the levee itself. Only the platform, where the engineers could stand to check the stone river. Why should there be more? Flandry leaned on the rail and fought to breathe.
A voice from below, hardly discernible through racing blood and the snarl of Gunung Utara—but cool, almost amused: “If you wish to immolate yourself in the lava, Captain, you still have time. Or you can stay there, holding us off, till the fumes have overcome you. Or, of course, you can surrender now. In that case, the persons who assisted you will not be put in the cage.”
Flandry croaked, “Will you let them go?”
“Come, come,” chided Warouw. “Let us be sensible. I promise nothing except to spare them the ultimate punishment.”
Somewhere in the pounding weariness of his brain, Flandry thought that he should at least make an epigram. But it was too much like work. He threw his gun into the lava. “I’ll be down in a minute,” he sighed.