Commander Grinnel, after reporting formally, had gone straight to a
joint. It wasn't until midnight that he got The Word, from a friendly
O.N.I. lieutenant who had dropped into the house.
"What?" Grinnel roared. "Who is this woman? Where is she? Take me to her
at once!"
"Commander!" the lieutenant said aghast. "I just got here!"
"You heard me, mister! At once!"
While Grinnel dressed he demanded particulars. The lieutenant dutifully
scoured his memory. "Brought in on some cloak-and-dagger deal,
Commander. The kind you usually run. Lieutenant-Commander Jacobi was in
Syndic Territory on a recruiting, sabotage and reconnaissance mission
and one of the D.A.R. passed the girl on him. A real Syndic member.
Priceless. And, as I said, she identified this fellow as Charles Orsino,
another Syndic. Why are you so interested, if I may ask?"
The Commander dearly wanted to give him a grim: "You may not," but
didn't dare. Now was the time to be frank and open. One hint that he had
anything to hide or cover up would put his throat to the knife. "The
man's my baby, lieutenant," he said. "Either your girl's mistaken or Van
Dellen and his polygraph tech and I were taken in by a brand-new
technique." _That_ was nice work, he congratulated himself. Got in Van
Dellen and the tech.... Maybe, come to think of it, the tech _was_
crooked? No; there was the way Wyman had responded perfectly under scop.
O.N.I.'s building was two stories and an attic, wood-framed, beginning
to rot already in the eternal Irish damp.
"We've got her on the third floor, Commander," the lieutenant said. "You
get there by a ladder."
"In God's name, why?" They walked past the Charge of Quarters, who
snapped to a guilty and belated attention, and through the deserted
offices of the first and second floors.
"Frankly, we've had a little trouble hanging on to her."
"She runs away?"
"No, nothing like that--not yet, at least. Marine G-2 and Guard
Intelligence School have both tried to snatch her from us. First with
requisitions, then with muscle. We hope to keep her until the word gets
to Iceland. Then, naturally, _we'll_ be out in the cold."
The lieutenant laughed. Grinnel, puffing up the ladder, did not.
The door and lock on Lee Bennet's quarters were impressive. The
lieutenant rapped. "Are you awake, Lee? There's an officer here who
wants to talk to you."
"Come in," she said.
The lieutenant's hands flew over the lock and the door sprang open. The
girl was sitting in the dark.
"I'm Commander Grinnel, my dear," he said. After eight hours in the
joint, he could feel authentically fatherly to her. "If the time isn't
quite convenient--"
"It's all right," she said listlessly. "What do you want to know?"
"The man you identify as Orsino--it was quite a shock to me. Commander
Van Dellen, who died a hero's death only days ago accepted him as
authentic and so, I must admit, did I. He passed both scop and
polygraph."
"I can't help that," she said. "He came right up to me and told me who
he was. I recognized him, of course. He's a polo player. I've seen him
play on Long Island often enough, the damned snob. He's not much in the
Syndic, but he's close to F. W. Taylor. Orsino's an orphan. I don't know
whether Taylor's actually adopted him or not. I think not."
"No--possible--mistake?"
"No possible mistake." She began to tremble. "My God, Commander
Whoever-You-Are, do you think I could forget one of those damned
sneering faces. Or what those people did to me? Get the lie detector
again! Strap me into the lie detector! I insist on it! I won't be called
a liar! Do you hear me? Get the lie detector!"
"Please," the Commander soothed. "I do believe you, my dear. Nobody
could doubt your sincerity. Thank you for helping us, and good night."
He backed out of the room with the lieutenant. As the door closed he
snapped at him: "Well, mister?"
The lieutenant shrugged. "The lie detector always bears her out. We've
stopped using it on her. We're convinced that she's on our side. Almost
deserving of citizenship."
"Come, now," the Commander said. "You know better than that."
Behind the locked door, Lee Bennet had thrown herself on the bed,
dry-eyed. She wished she could cry, but tears never came. Not since
those three roistering drunkards had demonstrated their virility as
males and their immunity as Syndics on her ... she couldn't cry any
more.
[Illustration]
Charles Orsino--another one of them. She hoped they caught him and
killed him, slowly. She knew all this was true. Then why did she feel
like a murderess? Why did she think incessantly of suicide? Why, why,
why?
* * * * *
Dawn came imperceptibly. First Charles could discern the outline of
treetops against the sky and then a little of the terrain before him and
at last two twisted shadows that slowly became sprawling half-naked
bodies. One of them was a woman's, mangled by fifty-caliber slugs. The
other was the body of a bearded giant--the one with whom they had
struggled in the dark.
Charles crawled out stiffly. The woman was--had been--a stringy, white
haired crone. Some animal's skull was tied to her pate with sinews as a
head-dress, and she was tattooed with blue crescents. The jaygee joined
him standing over her and said: "One of their witches. Part of the
religion, if you can call it that."
"A brand-new religion?" Charles asked dubiously. "Made up out of whole
cloth?"
"No," the jaygee said. "I understand it's an _old_
religion--pre-Christian. It kept going underground until the Troubles.
Then it flared up again all over Europe. A filthy business. Animal
sacrifices every new moon. Human sacrifices twice a year. What can you
expect from people like that?"
Charles reminded himself that the jaygee's fellow-citizens boiled
recalcitrant slaves. "I'll see what I can do about the jeep," he said.
The jaygee sat down on the wet grass. "What the hell's the use?" he
mumbled wearily. "Even if you get it running again. Even if we get back
to the base. They'll be gunning for you. Maybe they'll be gunning for me
if they killed my father." He tried to smile. "You got any aces in the
hole, gangster?"
"Maybe," Orsino said slowly. "What do you know about a woman named
Lee--Bennet? Works with O.N.I.?"
"Smuggled over here by the D.A.R. A goldmine of information. She's a
little nuts, too. What have you got on her?"
"Does she swing any weight? _Is she a citizen?_"
"No weight. They're just using her over at Intelligence to fill out the
picture of the Syndic. And she couldn't be a citizen. A woman has to
marry a citizen to be naturalized. What have you got to do with her, for
God's sake? Did you know her on the other side? She's death to the
Syndic; she can't do anything for you."
Charles barely heard him. That had to be it. The trigger on Lee
Falcaro's conditioning had to be the oath of citizenship as it was for
his. And it hadn't been tripped because this pirate gang didn't
particularly want or need women as first-class, all-privileges citizens.
A small part of the Government's cultural complex--but one that could
trap Lee Falcaro forever in the shell of her synthetic substitute for a
personality. Lie-tests, yes. Scopolamine, yes. But for a woman, no
subsequent oath.
"I ran into her in New Portsmouth. She knew me from the other side. She
turned me in...." He knelt at a puddle and drank thirstily; the water
eased hunger cramps a little. "I'll see what I can do with the jeep."
He lifted the hood and stole a look at the jaygee. Van Dellen was
dropping off to sleep on the wet grass. Charles pried a shear pin from
the jeep's winch, punched out the shear pin that had given way in the
transmission and replaced it. It involved some hammering. Cracked block,
he thought contemptuously. An officer and he couldn't tell whether the
block was cracked or not. If I ever get out of this we'll sweep them
from the face of the earth--or more likely just get rid of their
tom-fool Sociocrats and Constitutionists. The rest are probably all
right. Except maybe for those bastards of Guardsmen. A bad lot. Let's
hope they get killed in the fighting.
The small of his back tickled; he reached around to scratch it and felt
cold metal.
"Turn slowly or you'll be spitted like a pig," a bass voice growled.
He turned slowly. The cold metal now at his chest, was the leaf-shaped
blade of a spear. It was wielded by a red-haired, red-bearded,
barrel-chested giant whose blue-green eyes were as cold as death.
"Tie that one," somebody said. Another half-naked man jerked his wrists
behind him and lashed them together with cords.
"Hobble his feet." It was a woman's voice. A length of cord or sinew was
knotted to his ankles with a foot or two of play. He could walk but not
run. The giant lowered his spear and stepped aside.
The first thing Charles saw was that Lieutenant (j.g.) Van Dellen of the
North American Navy had escaped forever from his doubts and confusions.
They had skewered him to the turf while he slept. Charles hoped he had
not felt the blow.
The second thing he saw was a supple and coltish girl of perhaps 20
tenderly removing the animal skull from the head of the slain witch and
knotting it to her own red-tressed head. Even to Orsino's numbed
understanding, it was clearly an act of the highest significance. It
subtly changed the composition of the six-men group in the little glade.
They had been a small mob until she put on the skull, but the moment she
did they moved instinctively--one a step or two, the other merely
turning a bit, perhaps--to orient on her. There was no doubt that she
was in charge.
A witch, Orsino thought. "It kept going underground until the Troubles."
"A filthy business--human sacrifices twice a year."
She approached him and, like the shifting of a kaleidoscope, the group
fell into a new pattern of which she was still the focus. Charles
thought he had never seen a face so humorlessly conscious of power. The
petty ruler of a few barbarians, she carried herself as though she were
empress of the universe. Nor did a large gray louse that crawled from
her hairline across her forehead and back again affect her in the
slightest. She wore a greasy animal hide as though it were royal purple.
It added up to either insanity or a limitless pretension to religious
authority. And her eyes were not mad.
"You," she said coldly. "What about the jeep and the guns? Do they go?"
He laughed suddenly and idiotically at these words from the mouth of a
stone-age goddess. A raised spear sobered him instantly. "Yes," he said.
"Show my men how," she said, and squatted regally on the turf.
"Please," he said, "could I have something to eat first?"
She nodded indifferently and one of the men loped off into the brush.
* * * * *
His hands untied and his face greasy with venison fat, Charles spent the
daylight hours instructing six savages in the nomenclature, maintenance
and operation of the jeep and the twin-fifty machine gun.
They absorbed it with utter lack of curiosity. They more or less learned
to start and steer and stop the jeep. They more or less learned to load,
point and fire the gun.
Through the lessons the girl sat absolutely motionless, first in shadow,
then in noon and afternoon sun and then in shadow again. But she had
been listening. She said at last: "You are telling them nothing new now.
Is there no more?"
Charles noted that a spear was poised at his ribs. "A great deal more,"
he said hastily. "It takes months."
"They can work them now. What more is there to learn?"
"Well, what to do if something goes wrong."
She said, as though speaking from vast experience: "When something goes
wrong, you start over again. That is all you can do. When I make
death-wine for the spear blades and the death-wine does not kill, it is
because something went wrong--a word or a sign or picking a plant at the
wrong time. The only thing to do is make the poison again. As you grow
in experience you make fewer mistakes. That is how it will be with my
men when they work the jeep and the guns."
She nodded ever so slightly at one of the men and he took a firmer grip
on his spear.
Death swooped low.
"No!" Charles exploded. "You don't understand! This isn't like anything
you do at all!" He was sweating, even in the late afternoon chill.
"You've got to have somebody who knows how to repair the jeep and the
gun. If they're busted they're busted and no amount of starting over
again will make them work!"
She nodded and said: "Tie his hands. We'll take him with us." Charles
was torn between relief and wonder at the way she spoke. He realized
that he had never, literally _never_, seen any person concede a point in
quite that fashion. There had been no hesitation, there had been no
reluctance in the voice, not a flicker of displeasure in the face.
Simply, without forcing, she had said: "We'll take him with us." It was
as though--as though she had re-made the immediate past, un-making her
opposition to the idea, nullifying it. She was a person who was not at
war with herself in any respect whatever, a person who knew exactly who
she was and what she was--
The girl rose in a single flowing motion, startling after her day spent
in immobility. She led the way, flanked by two of the spearmen. The
other four followed in the jeep, at a crawl. Last of all came Charles,
and nobody had to urge him. In his portable trap his hours would be
numbered if he got separated from his captors.
Stick with them, he told himself, stumbling through the brush. Just stay
alive and you can outsmart these savages. He fell, cursed, picked
himself up, stumbled on after the growl of the jeep.
Dawn brought them to a collection of mud-and-wattle huts, a corral
enclosing a few dozen head of wretched diseased cattle, a few adults and
a few children. The girl was still clear-eyed and supple in her
movements. Her spearmen yawned and stretched stiffly. Charles was a
walking dead man, battered by countless trees and stumbles on the long
trek. With red and swollen eyes he watched while half-naked brats
swarmed over the jeep and grownups made obeisances to the girl--all but
one.
This was an evil-faced harridan who said to her with cool insolence: "I
see you claim the power of the goddess now, my dear. Has something
happened to my sister?"
"The guns killed a certain person. I put on the skull. You know what I
am; do not say 'claim to be.' I warn you once."
"Liar!" shrieked the harridan. "You killed her and stole the skull! St.
Patrick and St. Bridget shrivel your guts! Abaddon and Lucifer pierce
your eyes!"
An arena formed about them as the girl said coldly: "I warn you the
second time."
The harridan made signs with her fingers, glaring at her; there was a
moan from the watchers; some turned aside and a half-grown girl fainted
dead away.
The girl with the skull on her pate said, as though speaking from a
million years and a million miles away: "This is the third warning;
there are no more. Now the worm is in your backbone gnawing. Now the
maggots are at your eyes, devouring them. Your bowels turn to water;
your heart pounds like the heart of a bird; soon it will not beat at
all." As the eerie, space-filling whisper drilled on the watchers broke
and ran, holding their hands over their ears, white-faced, but the
harridan stood as if rooted to the earth. Charles listened dully as the
curse was droned, nor was he surprised when the harridan fell, blasted
by it. Another sorceress, aided it is true by pentothal, had months ago
done the same to him.
The people trickled back, muttering and abject.
Just stay alive and you can outsmart these savages, he repeated
ironically to himself. It had dawned on him that these savages lived by
an obscure and complicated code harder to master than the intricacies of
the Syndic or the Government.
A kick roused him to his feet. One of the spearmen grunted: "I'm putting
you with Kennedy."
"All right," Charles groaned. "You take these cords off me?"
"Later." He prodded Charles to a minute, ugly block house of logs from
which came smoke and an irregular metallic clanging. He cut the cords,
rolled great boulders away from a crawl-hole and shoved him through.
The place was about six by nine feet, hemmed in by ten-inch logs. The
light was very bad and the smell was too. A few loopholes let in some
air. There was a latrine pit and an open stone hearth and a naked brown
man with wild hair and a beard.