Spaced shadows resolved themselves into a double rank of parked
terrapins, forming concentric circles about the encampment. Such was
the pattern of a terrapin camp from time immemorial; it was safety
against attack by other raiders of the wasteland, and on each day one
ring could go forth to hunt, the other remain in place to guard the
women, the young, and the booty.
Even here the warm night air quivered ever so faintly with sound from
the east, the endless motion of the great trailer herd. By morning it
would have passed, and the hunters would follow it southward.
Within the great circle the women and older children were busy now,
while the men lounged about, talking quietly, boasting perfunctorily
of the day's deeds. The first day's hunt had been only a hit-and-run
affair at twilight, but in the midst torches flared sputteringly over
the remains of dismantled trailers; there were neat piles of steel
beam-lengths and undamaged armor plate, and sprawling heaps of metal
scrap that would be abandoned when the troop rolled south. To one side
a red glow came from the maw of a small furnace, melting aluminum to
be made into castings; the terrapins did not smelt steel, leaving that
to the giant scavenger machines that followed the herds at a more
respectful distance. Fuel, food, and usable ammunition had naturally
been transferred first of all from the captured trailers to the tanks
and storage compartments of the terrapins.
From the shadows of the inner circle a voice hailed Torcred by name,
and its owner came out into the light to meet him--a short man,
unusually plump for a terrapin, with heavy black eyebrows that seemed
pasted high on his round bald forehead, giving him a look of perpetual
astonishment.
He greeted the newcomer effusively. "My dear Torcred! We came very near
giving you up! And from the look of your machine, you must have had a
narrow squeak."
Torcred frowned imperceptibly. It seemed an evil omen that he should
be met by the only one among his fellow-terrapins whom he actively
disliked--Helsed, the talker, who was always close to the chief's ear
in council, but far from his side in the battle.
"That's right," admitted Torcred curtly, and started to brush past
the other and his brimming questions. But he found himself face to
face with another terrapin who had risen from the shadow, a taller man
whose hair shaded from the usual black into gray, and whose face was
permanently lined in a stern expression of command. He was Vazcled, the
chief. Torcred fell back a step and inclined his head in salute.
"What happened to you?" inquired Vazcled quietly.
"I was attacked," said the younger man with reluctance.
"By what?"
"An aero."
Even the chief's face showed surprise, and the listening Helsed's
eyebrows went up steeply. Vazcled said, "You are lucky to have escaped
so easily."
"I didn't escape. I shot it down."
Helsed exclaimed aloud and stared at his brother-terrapin enviously.
The chief's withered lips smiled. "Such victories are rare," he said
approvingly. "I know of only two or three in the past fifty years. You
must tell us the story tonight, and Hiyik can make a song of it.... Did
you bring any trophy from the wreck?"
Torcred licked his lips nervously. "No," he said. "It fell a long way
off...."
"Well, no matter," the chief shrugged. "We will find the spot on
the back trail." Already--Helsed, the eager newsbearer, had dashed
off without waiting for details--they were surrounded by a growing
audience, afire to know more about Torcred's almost unheard-of exploit.
* * * * *
Torcred, dazed, found himself sitting atop someone else's machine,
relating his battle with the aero to an enthusiastic mob of his
fellow-warriors. The terrapins lost their customary reserved poise and
grew festive; while Torcred almost choked on the lies with which he
ended his narrative, they pressed food and drink on him and made him go
back over the most stirring parts. Then Hiyik the poet had his turn,
and retold the story in improvised verses, his chanting voice mingling
with the hiss and clangor of the workshop in the midst of the circle on
whose rim the warriors were gathered.
But the hero of it all sat moody, well-nigh oblivious, his brow
wrinkling painfully from time to time. The thoughts he was thinking
hurt. For what he was planning was treason, what he had already done
was treason--more than that, sacrilege, abomination, a trampling of the
laws that kept the diverse races of Earth eternally apart.... Lesser
breeds might hold such laws lightly--but not the proud terrapins.
For them all other peoples were enemies, or prey, or vermin beneath
contempt.
The bird-folk were enemies. And the crime of giving aid and comfort to
an enemy deserved the ultimate in punishment.
Torcred's mouth tightened grimly at the thought, and the logically
following reflection that he, Torcred the Terrapin, must have gone
quite insane. But even here, in the midst of his noisy comrades, he
could not forget the glimpse of a strange beauty that had fallen out
of the sky to destroy him--if not by the swift vengeance of outraged
tradition, then by returning and returning to haunt him all his days.
With a chill he realized that the chief was watching him thoughtfully,
and he strove to give his features a dignified impassivity appropriate
to the modesty of the feted hero.
The face of Helsed, hugging the spotlight as always, was at his elbow,
wearing a vapid smile which Torcred's hypersensitized suspicions saw
as a knowing smirk. And in reality, he knew, the fat terrapin's air
of loud thickheadedness masked a sharp scheming brain--and Helsed
hated him. Helsed had talked and toadied his way into the graces of
the council of elders and the chief, and he had hopes--the latter's
successor must be chosen soon from among the younger men. And in
the taciturn Torcred he saw his most dangerous rival, for the young
warrior's deeds spoke for him.
Sunk in thought, Torcred hardly realized the passage of time or that
the gathering was breaking up. Hiyik had ceased his recitative. One by
one the terrapins yawned, stretched, and moved off toward their own
vehicles; it was late, and tomorrow, first full day of the great hunt,
would be hard. The noisy labor in the camp's center went on unabated.
Torcred forced himself to yawn and stretch as elaborately as the
others, to rise unhurriedly to his feet. His plans, such as they were,
were complete; during the next day's farflung maneuvers and attacks
on the trailer herd, he should be able to slip off unnoticed and,
traveling fast, reach the vicinity of the aeros' nearest eyrie. There
he would leave the bird-girl. Whatever her fate then, she would be
alive among her own kind; and perhaps later she would be grateful to
the terrapin who had befriended her. Beyond that his thoughts did not
go....
As he started to walk away, the chief's voice rooted him to the spot.
"Wait a moment. I understand your machine was damaged; perhaps it needs
immediate repairs."
* * * * *
Torcred turned swiftly toward him. "No!" he exclaimed hastily. "There's
not much damage--a few bullet holes, a dent. No use bothering with it
now."
"You never can tell." Vazcled rose; despite the hour's lateness the
wiry old man seemed untouched by fatigue. The bright eyes that dwelt
on Torcred's face held only friendly concern. "You are confident now;
but a failure of mechanism can betray the bravest. Let me look your
terrapin over and judge for myself."
The chief's wish was a command. Torcred's spirit quailed as, walking
like an automaton, he led the way. He derived a little comfort from
noting that Helsed had already disappeared; when worst came to worst,
he would at least be spared, in the moment of disaster, the sight of
his enemy's triumph.... And he could still hope that the chief would
content himself with an outside examination.
Vazcled studied without speaking the stove-in nose of the terrapin.
His experienced hands felt out the damage that was invisible in the
uncertain light; he clicked his tongue.
"That's no dent," he said at last. "You ran head-on into a shell. I'd
better look at it from inside; open the door."
With wooden fingers Torcred produced the key. Silently he handed it to
the chief; he did not think, in that whirling moment, of the symbolism
of the action, but Vazcled stared at him curiously before turning to
the door. For a terrapin to surrender the key of his vehicle was a
gesture of abject self-humiliation.
The simple lock clicked. Torcred fell back a step, his shoulders
hunched tensely and his hand convulsively closing on the haft of his
dagger.
The door swung open. The chief fumbled and switched on the inside
light; he grunted softly, squinting up at the fore part of the roof.
Past him Torcred could see the whole cramped interior of the armored
car; it was empty.
Across the chaos of his mind fluttered one clear thought; the girl had
escaped. And he was at once limp with relief and taut with a new and
formless fear, mixed with an odd empty sense of loss.
Vazcled grunted again, emerging. Pressing the key into Torcred's damp
palm, he said pointedly, "Keep that."
Matter-of-factly he added. "You need repairs. Drive into the center,
then look up somebody with room for an extra sleeper. You won't be
called for guard duty; you've earned a good night's rest." The chief's
wrinkled hand rested affectionately on the young man's shoulder, but to
Torcred's imagination it burned like fire.
His mumbled response was swallowed by a sudden burst of noise from the
outer periphery. A voice and then voices cried out confusedly, and then
a light blazed, silhouetting the parked terrapins. And Torcred was
already running among them, but even as he ran his world was crashing
and crumbling about his ears, and he knew he had been most cruelly
mocked by fate.
* * * * *
On the edge of the encampment a space of sand was white in the glare
of lights. White too was the face of the girl who swayed, fast in the
grip of two men. Others pressed round with flashing knives, and more
warriors, half-dressed and sleepy-eyed, appeared to reinforce them.
They looked questioningly at one another; somehow the appearance of
a lone alien being, with no machine in evidence, was more sinisterly
alarming than would have been the onslaught of a horde of armed and
armored juggernauts.
Torcred halted and stood rigid, his gaze stabbing into the knot of men.
And before him they opened out, pushing the girl to the fore, as if
in accusation. The next moment he realized that that was because the
chief stood beside him. And he saw that one of the bird-girl's arms
was pinioned by a sentry, and that Helsed, puffing himself with menace
grasped the other.
"Silence!" roared Vazcled's voice of command. "Bring her nearer. Where
did she come from? What is she?"
No one answered at once. Torcred's eyes were on the bird-girl. For a
moment her gaze met his, then she looked past him. On her pale face
was written the fierce pride he had seen before, and he knew she could
never betray him.
"Shall we make her answer?" Helsed grinned ingratiatingly at the
chief, and as if in demonstration of the methods he proposed, his grip
tightened on the girl's arm, twisting. She winced and closed her eyes,
making no sound.
And Torcred, his remnants of caution whirled away like chips on a flood
tide of fury, was on the torturer in one catlike spring. He would have
used his knife, but he had forgotten it; his fist, with all his weight
behind it, crashed squarely into Helsed's hateful grin. Helsed was
hurled backward and rolled over limply on the sand.
Torcred stood watching him, poised to renew the attack. The other man
who had been holding the girl involuntarily released her and stepped
back, leaving her standing alone beside Torcred--but she too shrank
away from him; his berserk rage had made him terrible. The surrounding
warriors hesitated, and behind them, from among the cars or from
vantages atop them, the women and children stared open-mouthed.
In the stunned silence, Torcred could hear the whisper of night wind,
and from far away the faint mutter of gunfire as nocturnal machines of
prey still took their toll of the trailer herd. He had other random
impressions: the feel of the soft sand underfoot, the hard brightness
of the stars overhead, the odor of fuel and heated metal that hung
about the camp.
Then he turned, straightening: his eyes sought out Vazcled beyond the
ring of men who were warily beginning to close on him. And he laughed,
having cast away his world.
"See, chief!" he shouted. "See, terrapins! I brought home a trophy,
after all!"