Lest We Forget Thee, Earth Page 6

  He drew a gleaming plastic message-cube from his tunic pocket and handed it to the Overlord. “Play this, Sire. Then judge’ which one of us betrays you and which seeks your welfare.”

  Taking the cube, Joroiran stepped to one side and converted it to playback. Navarre strained his ears but was unable to pick up more than faint murmurs. When the message had run its course, the ruler returned, glaring bitterly at Navarre.

  “I hardly know which of you to trust less,” he said somberly. “You, Kausirn, who has made a figurehead of me—or you, Navarre.” He scowled. “Earthman, you came in here with sweet words, but this cube tells me that every word was a lie. You would help overthrow Kausirn only to place yourself in command. I never expected treachery from you, Navarre.”

  He turned to Kausirn. “Take him away,” he ordered. “Have him killed. And do something about these ten thousand awakened Earthmen. Send a fleet to Earth to destroy them.” Joroiran sounded near tears; he seemed to be choking back bitter sobs before each words. “And leave me alone. I don’t want to see you any more today, Kausirn. Go run Jorus, and let me weep.”

  The little monarch looked from Kausirn to the stunned Earthman. “You are both betrayers. But at least Kausirn will allow me the pretense of ruling. Go. Away!”

  “At once, Sire,” said the Lyrellan unctuously.

  He jabbed the blaster in Navarre’s ribs. “Come with me, Earthman. The Overlord wishes privacy.”

  VIII

  The lower depths of the Overlord’s palace were damp and musty—intentionally so, to increase a prisoner’s discomfort. Navarre huddled moodily in a cell crusted with wall-lichens, listening to the steady pacing of the bulky Daborian guard outside.

  Not even Kausirn had cared to kill him in cold blood. Navarre had not expected mercy from the Lyrellan, but evidently Kausirn was anxious to observe the legal formalities. There would be a public trial, its outcome carefully predetermined and its course well rehearsed, followed by Navarre’s degradation and execution.

  It made sense. A less devious planner than Kausirn might have gunned Navarre down in a dark alcove of the palace and thereby rid himself of one dangerous enemy. But by the public exposure of Navarre’s infamy, Kausirn would not only achieve the same end but would also cast discredit on the entire line of Earthmen.

  Navarre cradled his head in his hands, feeling the tiny stubbles of upshooting hair. For a year, he had let his hair grow; the year he had spent in the distant galaxy that held Earth and Procyon. But at the end of the year, when the seeding of Procyon was done and already half a thousand new Earthmen had been born, Helna and Domrik Carso and Navarre had come together, and they had decided the time had come for them to return to the main starways.

  “It’s best,” Carso had growled. “You stay away too long and it’s possible Joroiran may decide to trace you. You never can tell. If we remain here, we may draw suspicion to the project. I vote that we go back.”

  Helna had agreed. “I’ll return to Kariad, you to Jorus,” she told Navarre. “We can enter once again the confidences of our masters. Perhaps we can turn that to some use in the days to come.”

  Now, trapped in a cell, Navarre wondered how Kausirn had found out his plans, how the Lyrellan had known that a new race of Earthmen was rising in Galaxy RGC18347. It was too accurate to be a mere guess. Had they been followed this past year?

  Navarre frowned. Somehow his defenseless ten thousand would have to be warned. But first—escape.

  He squinted through the murk at the Daborian guard who paced without. Daborians were fierce warriors, thought Navarre, but the species was not overlong on brains. He eyed the tusked one’s seven-foot bulk appreciatively.

  “Holla, old one, your teeth rot in your head!”

  “Quiet, Sir Earthman. You are not to speak.”

  “Am I to take orders from a moldering corpse of a warrior?” Navarre snapped waspishly. “Fie, old one. You frighten me not.”

  “I am ordered not to speak with you.”

  “For fear I’d befuddle your slender brain and escape, eh? Milord Kausirn has a low opinion of your kind, I fear. I remember him saying of old that a Daborian’s usefulness begins below the neck. Not so, moldy one?”

  The Daborian whirled and peered angrily into Navarre’s cell. His polished tusks glinted brightly. Navarre put a hand between the bars and tugged at the alien’s painstakingly combed beard. The Daborian howled.

  “It surprises me the beard did not come off in my hand,” Navarre said.

  The Daborian grunted a curse and jabbed his fist through the bars; Navarre laughed, dancing lightly back. Mockingly he offered three choice oaths, from the safety of the rear of his cell.

  The Daborian, he knew, could rend him into four quivering chunks if he ever got close enough. But that was not going to happen. Navarre stationed himself perhaps a yard from the bars and continued to rail at the guard.

  Maddened, the Daborian reversed his gun and hammered at Navarre with the butt. The first wild swing came within an inch of laying open the Earthman’s skull; on the second, Navarre managed to seize the slashing butt. He tugged with sudden strength. He dragged the rifle halfway from the guard’s grasp, just enough to get his own hands on the firing stud.

  The bewildered Daborian yelled just once before Navarre dissolved his face. A second blast finished off the electronic lock that sealed shut the cell.

  Fifteen minutes later Navarre returned to the warm sunlight, a free man, in the garb of a Daborian guard.

  Verru, the wigmaker of Dombril Street, was a pale, wizened little old Joran who blinked seven or eight times as the stranger slipped into his shop, locking the door behind him and holding a finger to his lips for silence.

  Wordlessly, Navarre slipped behind the counter, grasped the wigmaker’s scrawny arm, and drew him back through the arras into his stockroom. There he said, “Sorry for the mystery, wigmaker. I feel the need for your services.”

  “You are not a Daborian!”

  “The face belies the uniform,” Navarre said. He grinned, showing neat, even teeth. “My tusks don’t quite meet the qualifications. Nor my scalp.” He lifted his borrowed cap.

  Verru’s eyes widened. “An Earthman!”

  “Indeed. I’m looking for a wig for—ah—a masquerade. Have you anything in Kariadi style?”

  The trembling wigmaker said, “One moment.”

  He bustled through a score or more of boxes before producing a glossy black headpiece. “Here!”

  “Affix it for me,” Navarre said.

  Sighing, the wigmaker led him to a mirrored alcove and sealed the wig to his scalp. Navarre examined his reflection approvingly. In all but color, he might pass for a man of Kariad.

  “Well done,” he said. Reaching below his uniform for his money-pouch, he produced two green bills of Imperial scrip. One he handed-to the wigmaker, saying, “This is for you. As for the other—go into the street and wait there until a Kariadi about my size comes past. Then somehow manage to entice him into your store, making use of the money.”

  “This is very irregular. Why must I do these things, Sir Earthman?”

  “Because otherwise I’ll have you flayed. Now go!” The wigmaker went.

  Navarre took up a station behind the shopkeeper’s door, clutching his gun tightly, and waited. Five minutes passed.

  Then he heard the wigmaker’s voice outside, tremulous, unhappy.

  “I beg you, friend. Step within my shop a while.”

  “Sorry, wigmaker. No need for your trade have I.”

  “Good sir, I ask it as a favor. I have an order for a wig styled in your fashion. No, don’t leave. I can make it worth your while. Here. This will be yours if you’ll let me sketch your hair style. It will be but a moment’s work…”

  Navarre grinned. The wigmaker was shrewd.

  “Well, if it’s only a moment, then. I guess it’s worth a hundred units to me if you like my hair style.”

  The door opened. Navarre drew back and let the wigmaker enter. Be
hind him came a Kariadi of about Navarre’s general size and build.

  Navarre brought his gun butt down with stunning force on the back of the Kariadi’s head, and caught him as he fell.

  “These crimes in my shop, Sir Earthman—”

  “Are in the name of the Overlord,” Navarre told the quivering wigmaker. He knelt over the unconscious Kariadi and began to strip away his clothing.

  “Lock your door,” he ordered. “And get out your blue dyes. I have more work for you.”

  The job was done in thirty minutes. The Kariadi, by this time awake and furious, lay bound and gagged in the wig-maker’s stockroom, clad in the oversize uniform of Joroiran’s Daborian guard. Navarre, a fine Kariadi blue in color from forehead to toes, and topped with a shining mop of black Kariadi hair, grinned at the grunting prisoner.

  “You serve a noble cause, my friend. It was too bad you had to be treated so basely.”

  “Mmph! Mgggl!”

  “Hush,” Navarre whispered. He examined his image in the wigmaker’s mirror. Resplendent in a tight-fitting Kariadi tunic, he scarcely recognized himself. He drew forth the Kariadi’s wallet and extracted his money, including the hundred-unit Joran note the wigmaker had given him.

  “Here,” he said, stuffing the wad of bills under the Kariadi’s leg. “I seek only your identity, not your cash.” He added another hundred-unit note to the wad, gave yet another to the wigmaker, and said, “You’ll be watched. If you free him before an hour has elapsed, I’ll have you flayed in Central Plaza.”

  “I’ll keep him a month, Sir Earthman, if you command it.” The wigmaker was green with fright.

  “An hour will be sufficient, Verru. And a thousand thanks for your help in this matter.” Giving the panicky old man a noble salute, Navarre adjusted his cape, unlocked the shop door, and stepped out into the street.

  He hailed a passing jetcab.

  “Take me to the spaceport,” he said, in a guttural Kariadi accent.

  As he had suspected, Kausirn had posted guards at the spaceport. He was stopped by a pair of sleek Joran secret-service men—he recognized the tiny emblem at their throats, having designed it himself at a time when he was more in favor on Jorus—and was* asked to produce his papers.

  He offered the passport he had taken from the Kariadi. They gave it a routine look-through and handed it back.

  “How come the look-through?” he asked. “Somebody back there said you were looking for a prisoner who escaped from the Overlord’s jail. There any truth in that?”

  “Where’d you hear that story?”

  Navarre shrugged innocently. “He was standing near the refreshment dials. Curious-looking fellow—he wore a hood, and kept his face turned away from me. Said the Overlord had captured some hot-shot criminal, or maybe it was an assassin. But he got away. Say, are Jorus’ dungeons so easily unsealed?”

  The secret-service men exchanged troubled glances. “What color was this fellow?”

  “Why, he was pink—like you Jorans. Or maybe he was an Earthman. I couldn’t see under that hood, of course, but he might very well have been shaven, y’know. And I couldn’t see his eyes. But he may still be there, if you’re interested.”

  “We are. Thanks.”

  Navarre grinned wryly and moved on toward the ticket booths as the secret-service men dashed down toward the direction of the refreshment dials. He hoped they would have a merry time searching through the crowd.

  But the fact that he was effecting a successful escape afforded him little actual joy. The Lyrellan knew of his plans, now, and the fledgling colonies of Earthmen in Galaxy RGC18347 were in great danger.

  He boarded the liner, cradled in, and awaited blast-off impatiently, consuming time by silently parsing the irregular Kariadi verbs.

  IX

  Customs-check was swift and simple on Kariad. The Kariadi customs officers paid little attention to their own nationals; it was outworlders they kept watch for. Navarre merely handed over his passport, made out in the name of Melwod Finst, and nodded to the customs official’s two or three brief questions. Since he had no baggage, he obviously had nothing to declare.

  He moved on, into the spaceport. The money-changing booths lay straight ahead and he joined the line, reaching the slot twenty minutes later. He drew forth his remaining Joran money, some six hundred units in all, and fed it to the machine.

  Conversion was automatic; the changer clicked twice and spewed eight hundred and three Kariadi credit-bills back at him. He folded them into his pocket and continued on. There was no sign of pursuit, this time.

  Deliberately he walked on through the crowded arcades for ten minutes more. Then, all seeming clear, he stepped into a public communicator booth, inserted a coin, and requested Information.

  The directory-robot grinned impersonally at him. “Yours to serve, good sir.”

  “I want the number of Helna Winstin, Earthman to the Court of Lord Marhaill.”

  His coins came clicking back. The robot said, after the moment’s pause necessary to fish the data from its sponge-platinum memory banks, “Four-oh-three-oh-six K Red.”

  Quickly Navarre punched out the number. On the screen appeared a diamond-shaped insignia framing an elaborate scrollwork M. A female voice said, “Lord Marhaill’s. With whom would you speak?”

  “Helna Winstin. The Earthman to the Court.”

  “And who calls her?”

  “Melwod Finst. I’m but newly returned from Jorus.”

  After a pause the Oligocrat’s emblem dissolved, and Helna Winstin’s head and shoulders took their place on the screen. She looked outward at Navarre cautiously; her face seemed paler than ever, the cheekbones more pronounced. She had shaved her scalp not long before, he noticed.

  “Milady, I am Melwod Finst of Kariad West. I crave a private audience with you at once.”

  “You’ll have to make regular application, Freeholder Finst. I’m very busy just now. You—”

  Her eyes went wide as the supposed Finst tugged at his frontmost lock of hair, yanking it away from his scalp sufficiently far enough to show where the blue skin color ended and where the pale white began. He replaced the lock, pressing it down to rebind it to his scalp, and grinned. The grin was unmistakable.

  “I have serious matters to discuss with you, Milady,” Navarre said. “My seedling farm is in serious danger. The crop is threatened by hostile forces. This concerns you, I believe.”

  She nodded. “I believe it does. Let us arrange an immediate meeting, Melwod Finst.”

  They met at the Two Suns, a refreshment place not too far from the spaceport. Navarre, who was unfamiliar with Kariad, was not anxious to travel any great distance to meet Helna; since he was posing as an ostensible Kariadi, an undue lack of familiarity on his part with his native world might seem suspicious.

  He arrived at the place long before she did. They had arranged that he was to find her, not she him; not seeing her at any of the tables, he took a seat at the bar.

  “Rum,” he said. He knew better than to order the vile Kariadi beer.

  He sat alone, nursing his drink, grunting noncommitally any time a local barfly attempted to engage him in conversation. Thirty minutes and three rums later, Helna arrived. She paused just inside the door of the place, standing regally erect as she looked around for him.

  Navarre slipped away from the bar and went up to her.

  “Milady?”

  She glanced inquisitively at him.

  “I am Melwod Finst,” he told her gravely. “Newly come from Jorus.”

  He led her to a table in the back, drew a coin from his pocket, and purchased thirty minutes of privacy. The dull blue of the force-screen sprang up around them. During the next half hour they could carouse undisturbed, or make love, or plot the destruction of the galaxy.

  Helna said, “Why the disguise? Where have you been? What—”

  “One question at a time, Helna. The disguise I needed in order to get off Jorus. My old rival Kausirn has laid me under sentence of
death.”

  “How can he?”

  “Because he knows our plan. Kausirn’s spies are more ingenious than we think. I heard him tell the Overlord everything—where we were, the secret of the Chalice, our eventual hope of rebuilding the civilization of Earth.”

  “You denied it, naturally.”

  “I said it was madness. But he had some sort of documentary evidence he gave the Overlord, and Joroiran was immediately convinced. Just after I had won him over, too.” Navarre scowled. “I managed to escape and flee here in this guise, but we’ll have to block them before they send a fleet out to eradicate the settlements on Earth and Procyon. Where’s Carso?”

  Helna shrugged. “He’s taken cheap lodgings somewhere in the heart of the city while he waits for word from you that his banishment is revoked. I don’t see much of him these days.”

  “Small chance he’ll get unbanished now,” Navarre said.

  “Let’s find him. The three of us will have to decide what’s to be done.”

  He rose. Helna caught him by one wrist and gently tugged him back into his seat.

  “Is the emergency that pressing?” she asked. “Well…”

  “We’ve got twenty minutes more of privacy paid for—should we waste it? I haven’t seen you for a month, Hallam.”

  “I guess twenty minutes won’t matter much,” he said, grinning.

  They found Carso later that day, sitting in a bar in downtown Kariad City, clutching a mug of Kariadi beer in his hand. The half-breed looked soiled and puffy-faced; his scalp was dark with several days’ growth of hair, his bushy beard untrimmed and unkempt.

  He looked up in sudden alarm as Helna’s hand brushed lightly along his shoulder. “Hello,” he grunted. Then, seeing Navarre, he added, “Who’s your friend?”

  “His name is Melwod Finst. I thought you’d be interested in meeting him.”

  Carso extended a grimy hand. “Pleased.”

  Navarre stared unhappily at his erstwhile comrade, Filthy, drunken, ragged-looking, there was little of the Earthman left about Carso. True enough, Carso was a half-breed, his mother an Earthwoman—but now he seemed to have brought to the fore the worst characteristics of his nameless, drunken Joran father. He was a sad. sight.