Rogue Queen Page 4

  “The Avtini aren’t unfriendly, but we can’t take chances until we know more about you.” When they looked at her silently she rushed on: “There are other things I’m sure will interest you. For instance, there are the ruins on Survivors’ Point, in plain sight of this sky ship.”

  “Survivors’ Point?” said Bloch.

  Iroedh told them the story of the last bisexual Avtini, adding: “The remains of their fortress are still up there, if you can climb.”

  “How much of a climb is it? We can climb, but not vertically up the cliff face.”

  “You wouldn’t have to. The old trail that leads up the side of the valley is still usable though somewhat overgrown.”

  “What is up there?” asked Bloch.

  “You’ll find many relics of former times. The fort was rebuilt fifty-odd years ago, when a band of rogue drones used it as a base.”

  “Not a bad idea,” said Bloch. “Would you guide some of us up tomorrow?”

  “Gladly. What time will be convenient?”

  “A couple of hours after sunrise, let us say.”

  “That will be fine. Let’s each of us bring her own food, as we might not find each other’s fare palatable.”

  After Iroedh had left the Paris, Bloch asked Captain Subbarau: “How do you like our little redskin this time?”

  “Better than the other one,” replied Subbarau thoughtfully. “It gives one a curious sensation, like talking to an intelligent ant or bee in quasi-human form.”

  “They’re not, really; it’s just their familial organization. You mustn’t press the parallel too far. They’re intelligent, not instinctive like those fellows on Sirius Nine. And bees don’t have democratically elected councils.”

  “True. If one filled her—Should I refer to Iroedh as ‘her’ or ‘it’?”

  “I think of her as ‘her.’ After all, you call a girl baby ‘her’ even though she’s no more sexually developed than Iroedh.”

  “Well, if you filled her out a little here”—Subbarau made motions with his cupped hands in front of his chest—“and put a wig of real hair on her head instead of that feathery Iroquois crest, she wouldn’t make a bad-looking human female. If your taste runs to pink six-footers with cats’ eyes. Are they as backward as they seem? They don’t appear to have iron, let alone machinery.”

  “Funny about that. From all I can gather, they had a progressive culture up to two thousand of their years ago, when they adopted this sex-caste system. Since then they’ve not only stagnated, they’ve actually retrogressed.”

  “Perhaps they adopted a materialistic view, like the Earthly West, and it stultified their spiritual development?”

  “Don’t start that again, boss! Their sciences have stopped too. As for their religion, it’s all gone except for petty superstitions and curses. They’re great ones for omens and oracles, but the emotions that used to find a religious outlet are now devoted to their Communities.”

  “You mean hives,” said Subbarau.

  Rhodh told Iroedh: “Perhaps I was mistaken in sending you to deal with them. As far as I can see, all you accomplished was to shirk your share of the work of setting up the camp.”

  “I had nothing to do with their refusal,” said Iroedh with heat. “I told you, they’re bound by the rules of their own government.”

  “In any case, I had better deal with them tomorrow. What have you planned?”

  Iroedh told of the projected expedition to Survivors’ Point, adding: “I pray you let me guide them. If another takes my place tomorrow, they’ll wonder if we’ve fallen out. Besides, I have much more in the way of common interests with Daktablak than you.”

  “I do not think—”

  “Give me one more day,” said Iroedh, forcing herself to adopt a wheedling tone. “Anyway, it’s a two hours’ climb, and I know the way. Have you ever been there?”

  “I waste the Community’s time visiting worthless ancient rubbish? Hmp! Go ahead, then, with your silly men. Truth to tell, I’m just as glad not to spend time on this trip that could be put to better use in ordering the camp so that it reflects credit on Elham.”

  That night Iroedh hardly slept at all.

  III. Survivors’ Point

  Next morning as Iroedh walked toward the Paris, Bloch stood awaiting her. With him were the female man named Dulac and the male one called O’Mara, the latter with a rectangular leather case slung from one shoulder. Bloch again bore his mysterious weapon.

  “Camera,” said O’Mara in answer to Iroedh’s question, which left her no wiser.

  Bloch explained: “A magical picture-making machine. He comes on all these expeditions to make them.”

  “And what are those? Ornaments?” Iroedh pointed to a row of brass clips in Bloch’s belt, each clip holding a number of little brass cylindrical things.

  “They’re for this.” Bloch indicated the tube of dark metal, which Iroedh had learned was called a gon or gyn.

  “What’s that you’re saying, Baldy?” said O’Mara. “Don’t go blackguarding me to the young lady, now, just because I don’t speak the heathen dialect of her.”

  Iroedh, not understanding this speech, led the party along the road by which the Avtini had entered the valley. O’Mara made a peculiar shrill noise with his mouth, like that which Subbarau had made the previous day.

  “What’s that?” asked Iroedh.

  “We call it whistling,” said Bloch, and tried to show her how. But though she puckered and blew, nothing came out but air.

  She gave up and said: “Daktablak, you’ve asked many questions about our sex castes. Perhaps you’d tell me how your Terran sex system works?”

  When Bloch had given her a brief account of Terran monogamy, she said: “Does it make you men happier than we?”

  “How should I know? One cannot measure happiness with a meter, and anyway I am not intimately enough acquainted with your people to judge. Among men, some esteem the system highly while others find it extremely distressing.”

  “How so?”

  “Take Subbarau. He is unhappy because his female refused any longer to hibernate in a trance while he was away on his space trips, which take many years each, and left him for another male. And he comes from a country called India, where they take a serious view of such actions.”

  “Then you must age greatly during such a trip!”

  “No, because of the Lorenz-Fitzgerald effect, which slows down time when you go almost as fast as light so that to those on the ship the trip seems to consume only a fraction of the time it actually does.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Confidentially, neither do I, but it does operate that way. Of course this is hard on the mates of the ship people who are left home, so they usually take a medicine that puts them into a profound sleep, in which they do not age appreciably, while their partners are gone.”

  “How about you? Have you such a mate, and if so, is she on the ship or back on Terra?”

  “I am single, unmated, and quite satisfied with my state.”

  “Like a rogue drone?”

  “I suppose so, though I do not rob people as I understand they do.”

  “How about the Dylak?” asked Iroedh, glancing back to where Barbe Dulac plodded beside O’Mara, each looking frozenly forward. The longer legs of Iroedh and Bloch had enabled them to draw ahead of their companions. “Oh, she is unhappy also.”

  “How?”

  “She and O’—the man walking beside her—how would you say ‘fell in love’?”

  There followed several minutes of a search for synonyms, at the end of which Iroedh exclaimed: “I know what you mean! It’s our word oedhurh, which now means devotion to one’s Community, but which was used by the ancients in the sense of that violent emotion you describe. I’ve come across it in that sense in some of the old songs and poems. But how can you ‘fall into’ a condition like that? One ‘falls into’ a hole in the ground…”

  When Bloch had straightened her out on English figures of s
peech, she asked: “Are all men subject to this passion?”

  “Some more than others. In the culture of my people, for instance, it plays a substantial part, whereas Subbarau’s countrymen take a more detached view of it.”

  “But you said it made him unhappy.”

  “I think that was more hurt pride than love.”

  “And what happened to those two people behind us?”

  “They got en—they entered into a contract to mate permanently, such as I told you about.”

  “Something like when a drone is initiated into adulthood and swears to serve his queen?”

  “Yes. They got engaged, as we say, but then Barbe found her man was not what she had thought. He is what we call a roughneck—”

  “A rough neck? You mean he has bumps on the skin of his neck, like the creeping thing called an umdhag?”

  “A manner of speaking. He is a domineering fellow with a frightful temper, and she would not have fallen for him—”

  “You mean she fell out of a window or something to please him? A strange custom—”

  “Would not have fallen in love with him, I mean, if they had not been cooped up together so long on the ship. So she broke the engagement, and he has been in a rage ever since. He only insisted on coming along today to make things unpleasant for the rest of us.”

  “Because he’s unhappy, then, he wants everybody else to be unhappy too?”

  “That is about it.”

  “We sometimes have workers like that,” said Iroedh, thinking of Rhodh.

  “And he is frightfully jealous of me,” continued Bloch, “because she works with me all the time, preparing my specimens and transcribing my notes.”

  “Why, are you in love with her?”

  “I—uh—what?” Bloch looked at her with a startled expression, then said: “No, no, nothing of the sort,” and cast a furtive glance at the two following. “But he thinks I am.”

  To Iroedh his protestations sounded too vehement to be altogether convincing. She asked:

  “Could it be that you really are, Daktablak, but dislike to admit it because you fear the wrath of that strong man?”

  “Ridiculous, young lady. Let us talk of something else.”

  “If you wish, though I fear I shall never understand you mysterious men. And your kind of love can’t be worth much if it makes everybody so unhappy. Here we turn off.”

  She led them along a trail that ran from the road across the floor of the valley. Bloch said:

  “Iroedh, have you ever heard of another space ship’s landing here, before the Paris?”

  “No. We have ancient myths of gods coming down from the sky, but nobody believes them any more.”

  “This was only a few years ago, comparatively speaking. A mixed Osirian-Thothian expedition—”

  “What sort of expedition?”

  “One manned by people from the planets Osiris and Thoth, in the Procyonic system. Procyon is the second brightest star in the sky from here.”

  “You mean Ho-olhed?”

  “Whatever you call it. The Osirians are something like your uegs, but with scales all over, while the Thothians are only about so high”—he held out a hand at waist level—“and are covered with hair. Their ship alighted on what I think is this same continent, judging from their descriptions and photographs. But after they had been here only a few days a party they had sent out to reconnoiter was attacked. When the only survivor got back to their ship—”

  “Who attacked them?” asked Iroedh.

  “Avtini, from the account; probably a band of those rogue drones you tell about. Anyway, the survivor told such a wild tale that the captain, an Osirian named Fafashen, got panicky and ordered them to take off for their own system at once. Osirians are really too impulsive and emotional for space exploration.”

  “I haven’t heard of any such thing; but then it might have happened many sixty-fours of borbi from here, and such news wouldn’t travel far because one Community normally neither knows nor cares what goes on in the territory of another. The few people like me who are interested in the race as a whole are looked upon as queer.”

  “I have heard that before too,” said Bloch.

  The trail now wound slantwise up the slope. Knowing what she faced, Iroedh had worn nothing but her boots and a shoulder strap supporting her lunch bag and a bronze hatchet. When she began hacking at the brush that had overgrown the trail, Bloch said:

  “Here, let me!”

  He drew from his gear an object the like of which Iroedh had never seen: a thing like a knife, but several times as large, with a straight back edge and a curved cutting edge that made the blade widest about a third of the distance from the point to the hilt A single slash of this tool sent a swath of plants tumbling.

  Iroedh started to exclaim in wonderment, then checked herself. She could not afford to risk the slightest advantage by impulsiveness. Her agile mind had instantly seen the possibilities of the thing as a weapon; in fact she wondered why none of the Avtini had thought of it. Bloch seemed to take it for granted that she was familiar with such a device, but if she made a fuss over it he would guess that she was not and invoke his precious regulations to keep her from learning more about it.

  “What’s your name for that?” she asked casually.

  “A machete.”

  “A matselh,” she said, unconsciously giving the word the Avtinyk ending for tools and other artifacts.

  “What would you call it?”

  “A valh,” she replied, giving the Avtinyk for “knife.” “Do you use them as weapons?”

  Bloch paused before answering. “One could, though it’s a little point-heavy for the purpose. Centuries ago we fought with implements like this, called ‘swords.’ The best shape for that use would be somewhat lighter and tapering to a narrow point. Now, however, we employ these.” He touched the gun. “Or we should if we still had wars. How about your people?” he asked with a trace of suspicion.

  “Oh, some Communities use them,” Iroedh lied, “though the Avtini prefer the spear. May I try it?”

  “Do not cut yourself,” he warned, handing over the machete hilt-first.

  Iroedh took a few awkward swipes at the brush before she got the hang of the tool. She gave an Avtiny smile as she imagined the next stalk to be the neck of an Arsuun of Tvaarm. Swish!

  “Come on, come on” said O’Mara, who, with Barbe Dulac, had caught up with Bloch and Iroedh during the discussion. “Let a man be showing you how a trail is cleared.”

  And he waded into the brush with his own machete, sending great masses of vegetation flying.

  Thereafter they took turns, all but Barbe Dulac, who was too small. Sweat darkened the shirts of the three men until the two male ones pulled theirs off. Iroedh thereupon became fascinated by a Terran characteristic:

  “Daktablak, how is it that though you say you’re a functional male, you and O’Mara have rudimentary breasts like an Avtiny worker? Save that yours are even more rudimentary than ours.”

  “Your drones do not possess them?”

  “No. Are you sure you’re males?”

  Bloch gave the barking Terran laugh. “I have always believed so.”

  She persisted: “And why doesn’t the little Bardylak take off her tunic too? I should like to study her.”

  “It is against our custom.”

  At the request of Barbe Dulac, Bloch translated the last bit of conversation. Iroedh could not understand why Barbe turned red and O’Mara laughed loudly.

  “These heathens have no shame at all,” said the photographer, pausing to wipe the sweat from his forehead with the back of one hairy arm. “Here, Baldy,” he said to Bloch, “take over.”

  Though Iroedh could catch only an occasional word, Bloch’s manner told her he did not like to be so addressed. The xenologist went to work on the overgrowth in grim silence.

  Iroedh dropped back to talk to Barbe Dulac, a process that entailed the usual difficulty when each knows but a few words of the other�
�s language, though by pointing at things and making inquiring noises each soon expanded her vocabulary. The process was further complicated by the fact that the English spoken by the others was not Barbe’s native tongue, for she came from a place she called Helvetia and the others Switzerland.

  “We have the same sort of inconsistency,” said Iroedh. “The Arsuuni call themselves Arshuul, but, as we have no sh sound and a different system of word endings, we call them Arsuuni.”

  Then Iroedh took her turn at trail cutting, and the grade became too steep for conversation. They hoisted themselves over outcrops from which they could look far across the valley. For a time the trail wound along an almost sheer slope to which a few weeds clung precariously. Although the trail had been adequate when made, time and weather had piled debris on the cliffward side and worn away the outer edge so that they walked nervously along a reverse bank that almost spilled them over the edge when the gravel rolled and slid away under their feet.

  Iroedh pointed. “There’s the ruin.”

  “If we live to see it,” said O’Mara, mopping his forehead with his wadded-up shirt.

  Another half hour brought them to the base of the shoulder on which the fortress stood, and from there it was an easy walk out. Bloch indicated the great blocks of Cyclopean masonry, weighing tons apiece, and asked:

  “However did they transport their stones up here?”

  Iroedh shrugged. “We don’t know, unless they cut them from the cliff. The ancients did many things we can’t duplicate.”

  “And when will we be eating?” said O’Mara.

  “Any time,” said Bloch.

  They got out their lunch. Iroedh, munching her biscuits, asked about the various items of human food.

  “Do you mean,” she exclaimed, “that your males eat plant food and your females meat?”

  “Yes, and the other way round,” said Bloch. “Why don’t you try a bite of meat?”

  “Impossible! Not only is it against our laws, but when a worker has eaten nothing but plant food all her life a bite of meat would poison her. It’s a painful death. Though it is said that thousands of years ago, before the reforms, people lived on such mixed diets, nowadays we should consider it a mark of savagery.”