The Final Planet Read online

  “Carbines!” exclaimed O’Neill in despair. “The fools are letting them get away with the guns!” He ran down the slope toward the camp. By now the light from the grenade was gone. The camp was in a shambles. Soldiers were milling about in panic. Retha, her cloak ripped to shreds, was crumpled up on the desert floor by the tent she shared with Marjetta, sobbing hysterically. Sergeant Markos was holding onto his bloody arm, swearing with greater skill than O’Neill would have expected from a Zylongi, even a Zylongi noncom.

  He shook the man. “Where’s Pojoon?”

  “Dead,” grimaced the Sergeant, obviously in great pain.

  “Marjetta?”

  “They’ve got her.”

  “You must have shot the one who had me,” sobbed the hysterical Cadet.

  “We’re finished,” moaned the Sergeant. “Destroyed. They got every gun but mine.”

  “What will they do to Marjetta?” O’Neill hardly dared to ask it.

  “They’ll cook her. What else do you think hordi do with captives? They’re cannibals.” Sergeant Markos was desperate with pain and anger.

  Retha’s wails reached a nightmare pitch. It had been a stupid mission from the beginning. Now O’Neill had to deal with a wounded Sergeant and a hysterical junior officer. He picked Retha off the ground and clobbered her.

  “Look, you little coward, you had better forget that you’re not qualified to command, or none of us will ever get back to the City alive. You’re the commanding officer of this unit now. If you don’t have the kind of defense perimeter you read about in the textbook when I come back, I’ll personally boil you slowly in oil!”

  He then dumped her on the ground. Much to his surprise he heard her barking orders in her tiny voice behind him as he started up the hill. Poor kid. How do you arrange a defense perimeter when all you have to fight with are carbines and some discarded spears?

  O’Neill did not use his light as he stumbled up the steep barren hills. He trusted to his dubious psychic instinct to discover where in the vast night Marjetta was being held. Just when he needed it, of course, this sensitivity stopped functioning.

  After hours of desperate searching and uncounted curses aimed at the Lady Cardinal, he collapsed, cold, tired, and discouraged. He had climbed well into the foothills now and found no trace of hordi or their companions, those big ugly hairy monsters he had glimpsed in the glare of the illumination grenade.

  Marjetta is gone. I’d better give up and go back. Why did she, a competent officer destined for responsibility, come on this expedition? O’Neill shook his head. Did she know that her chances to survive this trip were nil? Did she seek such an end?

  Probably. She sounded like she valued neither herself nor her life that evening in the room, almost as though she didn’t care whether I raped her or not. Perhaps the woman didn’t want to live.

  He sighed. And she was still the proper woman.

  People die on pilgrimage. You mourn them. You remember them. And you go on. Someday you’ll meet them again and have a drink and laugh over it all—Seamus was not one of those who thought that the drink or laughter would be excluded from the kingdom of heaven.

  He said a prayer for her and asked her to forgive him for giving up. He was a soldier and he had his duty—Even if those idjits on Iona have forgotten about me.

  As he started down the depression reaching back toward the ridge that pointed to camp, O’Neill stopped for a moment and looked along the slight valley. For a fleeting moment he thought he saw a light flicker. A camp fire?

  He eased himself back up on the ridge. Careful not to dislodge any loose rock, he crept along the top. At the end of it, where it linked to the next ridge, the valley below deepened into a steep ravine. At the bottom was the mouth of a cave obscured by a rock at one side.

  Gingerly O’Neill slipped down into the ravine. Edging around the rock and peering into the eerily lit cave, O’Neill saw two naked hordi women tending a fire. A male was using a crude stone knife to prepare a spit. Outlined against the wall were a number of childish heads. At first, no sign of Marjetta. I could wipe out the whole bunch of them, but that wouldn’t bring her back. Besides, I don’t know if they’re the ones who attacked us.

  Then he saw her. At the back end of the cave, stripped, bound and gagged, and suspended from a rock outcropping, like a slaughtered steer. Is she still alive? They haven’t skinned her, have they? Well, there’s only one way to find out. The hordi were babbling away softly to one another, expecting, no doubt, a very succulent meal. He could smell the hot coals on their camp fire.

  If he fired into the cave he could easily kill Marjetta with a ricocheting bullet. He reached for the knife that was a souvenir from the monorail incident and reversed the carbine to make it a club.

  I kind of outweigh them all, if I don’t exactly outnumber them. Taking a deep breath and mumbling a short prayer, he plunged into the cave, screaming like an angry and injured banshee.

  The hordi were terrified at the sight of a red-bearded giant. Two quick shoves with the rifle butt and the females were cowering against the wall, their bodies protecting the children. The male hordi was braver; he turned toward O’Neill with the stone knife in his hand. O’Neill felt a moment of sympathy with the little creature; he stood his ground in defense of his home, family, and provisions. One fast swing of the rifle knocked the stone from the hordi’s hand; a solid poke with the right fist and Marjetta’s captor was out of action for a couple of hours.

  He slashed the coarse rope that attached her to the rock, tossed her over his shoulder, grabbed a carbine and a heavy sack that lay on the floor, and left the cave. Marjetta was conscious. Her struggling body impeded his progress as he ran through the ravine and up to the ridge, stumbling and staggering as he went. Her muffled shrieks suggested that she might want to say something; so, at a safe distance from the cave, O’Neill paused long enough to pull the gag from her mouth.

  “Put me down you fool. Untie me!” she ordered. “Where have you been? Why did it take so long for you to find me?”

  “Well, that’s gratitude for you.” In exasperation he dumped her rudely to the ground. “We don’t have time to stop. They’ll follow us or raise the alarm and get the whole tribe down on us.”

  “They will not, you idiot. I know what the she-demons were screaming. They think you are some great red god. It will be days before they dare leave the cave. We can go much more quickly if you are not carrying me.”

  Then softly she added, “You need not feel obliged to tell me about the Captain. I saw him as they were dragging me out of the camp.”

  Should I offer sympathy or congratulations? O’Neill wondered.

  She stumbled on, her voice wavering, “He was a good man, O’Neill. He … he deserved better than me.”

  Not knowing what to say, O’Neill coldly suggested they climb the next ridge. From higher ground they could get a view of the desert in the now gray night just before dawn. Silently Marjetta stumbled up the slope behind him on legs stiff from the lack of circulation.

  At the top they could see the lower hills leading to the desert. O’Neill pointed silently toward where he thought the camp was. Marjetta nodded.

  “But, O’Neill, what is that light behind us?”

  He turned and saw a glow rising from the other side of the ridge, perhaps two hundred yards away. They picked their way cautiously through the boulders around a great rock to peer into the next valley. Marjetta clutched his arm.

  The valley before them was a wide circular hollow more than a mile in diameter, reaching deep into the earth. Almost every inch of the hollow was occupied by a tent city, illuminated by many glittering camp fires. Though most of the occupants were apparently asleep, O’Neill and Marjetta could see occasional armed bands of hordi and Zylongi patrolling the perimeters. This was a serious military position, commanded by tough-minded professionals. In the center was a compound of larger tents. Here a large armed guard was posted, their spears angled away from their bodies ready for action.
O’Neill estimated that there must be at least seven thousand warriors, maybe ten thousand.

  Later, preoccupied about other problems, he would forget the existence of this army, not that when they finally intervened there was much he could have done about them.

  Marjetta leaned against a large rock. “Narth’s camp,” she murmured, “not more than a day’s march from the cultivated regions. Only three days from the City itself.”

  Although it was hardly the place for a lesson in Zylongian history, nevertheless O’Neill announced bluntly that he would not take one more step until he knew exactly what was going on.

  10

  “I am unclad,” Marjetta protested.

  “That is unfortunate, but it’s dark, and just now I’m not interested in your body, as admirable as it may be and as delightful as arguably it could be under other circumstances.” That should put her down. “Right now all I want is the truth. And if I don’t get the truth, all the easier to put you over my knee and give you the spanking you’ve been asking for since…”

  “Since I saw you kissing the Research Director.” The woman actually had the audacity to laugh at his threat. “Very well, I will tell you what I know. I warn you, however, there is much that I don’t know. Even the highest officers cannot be aware that Narth is so near.”

  “Talk,” Seamus ordered.

  So she talked, concisely, lucidly, like the good soldier she was. Seamus was almost prepared to forgive her for her ingratitude.

  The Zylongi, it seemed, had various ways of dealing with those who threatened to disrupt their civilization. Some “went to the god” at the Festival—those who were defective, mentally ill, or too old. Others—those considered socially disruptive—disappeared into the acid vats. Some were too important or too well known to suffer either fate. They were publicly thrust out of the City in a solemn ceremony. They were what Sammy and Ernie had called “no longer with us.” Those who didn’t die in the desert or the jungle survived in small communities that struggled to exist off tiny patches of cultivable ground and an occasional meat hunt.

  The hairy creatures O’Neill saw during the attack on their camp were mutants, the result of mistakes in the computer-programmed genetic manipulations. They were exposed to die outside in the cultivated areas. The hordi, however, considered these deformed creatures to be sacred and saved as many as they could, producing another race of humanoid type on the planet. They were smarter and stronger than the hordi but intensely loyal to their foster parents.

  The wild hordi, once considered numerically depleted to the point of extinction, seemed to be regenerating. They hated the City folk and killed them whenever possible, then ate their flesh in the hope of absorbing their strength.

  “A fate from which you bravely saved me.”

  “Uhm. Keep talking.”

  The hordi preferred the wetter, hotter, and lush regions on the other side of the mountains and existed in uneasy truce with the exiled Zylongi, who lived on the side of the mountain facing the desert. Both groups sometimes combined to make forays into the desert to raid ore trains, though they never crossed the banks of the River.

  Five years ago, Marjetta told him, a brilliant Zylongi General was sent into exile for plotting revolution. “He was one of my teachers, a demented man, but one with a vision that many of us found attractive. He wanted to clean away the Committees and make himself Emperor. Then he would restore all the old freedoms.”

  “You want an Emperor?”

  There was silence in the darkness opposite him. Then a tentative answer. “I don’t expect to live long enough for it to matter, but no, an emperor, especially one like Narth, would merely exchange one form of tyranny for another. I want freedom.”

  Do you now? So after all these years, people down here know what it is. I hope you’re listening up there, Lady Deirdre, and admiring my taste in women at that.

  Aloud he said, “Keep talking.”

  Narth was not docile at his exile ceremony, but threatened to come back and destroy the City. Since he had left, it was rumored that he had rallied the three outcast groups under his single command. The existence of such a union (indeed the existence of the groups themselves) was officially denied. Most Zylongi went about their daily lives convinced that the legends about Narth’s “empire” were not to be taken seriously. Thus, poor Dr. Samaritha kept trying to breed more domestic hordi in the quaint conviction that the savage variety was virtually extinct.

  “Does the Committee know that Narth’s army is this close to the City?” O’Neill asked, trying to absorb all the startling new information.

  “Of course they know it. You do not think those sensors at the departure point would miss such a mass of people? That is why they sent us on this expedition. They knew that Narth would go after our carbines. They expected we would all be killed.”

  “They were after me?” He leaned against the rock too.

  “Surely a man of even your meager intelligence must have perceived that they were after me. There is a lot of unrest in my generation. You saw Horor and Carina. Well, there are hundreds like them. The Committee knows I have not joined them. Not yet.

  “The Committee also knows that if I overcome my hesitation, I might be a dangerous rebel. So I had to die—and Pojoon, and Retha, and you and the rest as well. They were just as happy to get rid of you, too, but could have done that much more easily. Since I do not care about life, I came. They may even have sent word to Narth about the opportunity. What are a few carbines in exchange for one potential revolutionary leader whose family background protects her as long as she is in the City?” There was no bitterness in her voice, rather she spoke with something close to despair.

  “You’re risking the back of me hand, woman, with those comments on my intelligence. But tell me now, if Narth can never hope to capture the City, why does he come so close?”

  How did I ever get mixed up in this mess? Get me out of here. This isn’t our war. Of course bring the woman with me, we’ll give her more freedom than she ever dreamed of, too much freedom altogether.

  “Perhaps he thinks that during the time of the Festival the laser weapon controls in the Energy Center will be immobilized. They are the only serious defense we have against all the Outsiders, not that I am confident they would work if we were forced to use them. I know you didn’t see them; no one except the fools who command the army are supposed to see them. They are buried behind the wall and are supposed to break through the ground and begin firing at the touch of a button.”

  “And you’ve never seen them tested.”

  “Only pictures. They appear to be devastating. The Outsiders fear them greatly. However, the Festivals have become much wilder in the last few years. Maybe the Hooded Ones are in league with Narth; they could destroy the lasers. Narth must have the Committee very worried. I do not blame them; he is a fierce and terrible man.” Marjetta shivered.

  “He’d be after wanting you?”

  “He would.”

  “Well, he’s not going to get you, do you understand that, woman?”

  “I’m much more afraid of you than of him.”

  Now what does that mean? It doesn’t sound like a nasty crack. “’Tis a wise and prudent attitude.”

  O’Neill considered. His war was not with Narth or with Zylong. He was a spy for the Iona, which he hoped was still orbiting around up there planning emergency procedures to extricate him and Marjetta from this sinister planet. His first and principal loyalty was to his regiment and the pilgrimage.

  Marjetta interrupted his thoughts, clutching at his arm again. “O’Neill, look! A raiding party.”

  He could see in the increasing light a group of six big, grotesque, hair-covered monsters moving single file along the ridge. They were laden with guns and coming right toward them. “Our carbines,” he said, flipping the safety switch on his own. “Does the silencer impede the efficiency of these relics?”

  “Not at the range we are going to be shooting,” she replied tersely.
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  “I’ll start at the back, you take the front. Shoot fast. Those creatures seem to react slowly, but we can’t take any chances. When I say shoot, you’d better do it or those young troopers will be dead before another sunrise. Retha will be a tasty morsel for some hordi.”

  She shot, all right. Her bullets were as accurate as O’Neill’s. The monsters died quietly. Poor things, O’Neill thought compassionately. I don’t like killing you. I’ll buy the drinks when we meet further on. Well, the first round anyway.

  They quickly collected the carbines and climbed back across the hills toward the camp. When they arrived at the last low ridge just above the Zylongi camp, Marjetta whistled. There was a faint response. “It is all right,” she whispered in his ear. “Retha knows it is I.”

  The young soldiers, grimly holding their spears, were deployed behind a small rise of rocks above the camp. The Sergeant was patched up but still looked badly battered. Retha was cool, competent. As soon as she saw the two of them appear in the early light of dawn, she rushed forward to throw a cloak around Marjetta’s bare shoulders (at which O’Neill had resolutely refused to look, to say nothing of looking at the rest of her—well, maybe a wee glance) and take the heavy sack of carbines out of her arms.

  The troops were ready for battle, and though they could never have lasted long against any kind of effective attack, they looked like they would give a good account of themselves. Retha’s disciplined air wavered for a moment when it looked like she would hug her commander. “It is good that you are back, Honored Lieutenant.”

  “It is not unpleasant to be back,” Marjetta responded with equal formality.

  “And not me?” O’Neill demanded.

  Retha turned away, flustered and ashamed. “Of course, Honored Poet who saves everyone. What would we do without you?”