"An outrageous and preposterous bit of deviltry!" ven Klaeden had
hissed. "Get them. Make an example of them."
In reversal of previous policy, a police party was sent to search for
the self-styled ausland committee, with orders to capture or kill on
sight. The police party hunted down and killed six deserters, dragged
eleven more back to the occupied zone, under the very eyes of the native
population. But the immunizing serum was not recovered.
A few days later, three staff officers and a dozen officers in Justice
Section awoke with yelps in the night to pluck stinging needles from
their skins and scream for the guard to pursue the silent shadows that
had invaded their quarters.
Five men were captured. Three of them were natives. Interrogation failed
to disclose the location of the immunizing serum.
Muttering natives began to desert the project. The five culprits were
brought before the baron.
"Execute them in public, with full dress military ceremony. Then close
the border of the occupied zone. No native may leave, if he has signed a
work contract."
On the day of the execution, the natives attempted to leave en masse.
The police activity along the border approached the proportions of a
massacre.
"We were nearly finished," raged the baron, pacing like an angry
predator in the glade. "Another two weeks, and the first ore would come
out of the crushers. They can't stop us now. They can't quit."
Three elders of the Geoark sat like frozen statues on a mossy boulder,
tight-lipped, not understanding the colonel's tongue, disdaining to
speak in the intermediate language.
"Explain it to them, Meikl. Make it clear."
Pale, trembling with suppressed disapproval, the analyst bowed curtly
and turned to the girl. "Tell them," he said in the Intermedia, "that
death will come to any native who deserts, and that ten auslanders will
die for every man murdered by the renegade committee. Tell them that the
Geoark is...." He paused. There was no word for "hostage."
He was explaining the hostage-concept lengthily, while the girl's face
drained of color. Suddenly she turned away to retch. Meikl stood
stricken for a moment, turned helplessly toward the baron.
"_They_ understood you, damn them!" ven Klaeden snapped. "They know the
Intermedia."
The elders continued to sit stonily on the boulder without acknowledging
that they had heard. One of them sighed deeply and spoke a few words to
the others. They nodded sadly, answered with polite monosyllables.
"_No!_" Letha yelped, suddenly whirling, looking at the elders.
One of them smiled and murmured a few words to her. Then the three of
them slid down from the boulder. The guard who stood at port arms a few
feet away stirred restlessly.
The elders walked casually toward a path leading away from the glade.
The guard looked questioningly at the officers.
"Where are they going?" ven Klaeden demanded.
"Well, Letha?" Meikl muttered.
"I--I don't know--"
"You're lying, girl," the baron grunted, then to the guards: "Tell them
to halt."
"Party, _halt_!" snapped the guard.
The three elderly gentlemen continued toward the path, loose robes
gathered up from spindley shins.
"_Party, halt!_"
The elders murmured conversationally among themselves as they continued.
"HALT, I SAID."
"Take the one in the middle," ordered ven Klaeden.
The guard lifted the snub-nosed shoulder weapon. There was a brief
rattling hiss. The back of the elder's robe went crimson, and he
crumpled at the entrance of the pathway.
The other two continued on their way, their stride unbroken.
"Shoot for the legs, you fool!" barked the baron.
The rattling hiss came again. They fell in the shrubs, whimpering
softly.
Meikl turned away with a choking spasm in his throat, looked around for
Letha. She had vanished from the glade.
"Haul them to the dispensary, keep them prisoner," the baron was
growling.
Meikl turned on him. "Now it's come to this, has it?" he snapped. "From
the beginning, they were willing--even eager, to give what we wanted.
Why did they _stop_ being willing?"
"That's enough, Meikl!"
"I've hardly started. You came here like a tyrant, and they served you
like a friend. You couldn't bear it. 'Brethren', they said. But there's
nothing about 'brethren' in the tactical handbooks, is there, Baron?"
"Shut up."
Ven Klaeden said it quietly, as if bored. He crossed slowly to stand
before the analyst and stare at him icily.
"You speak of the unconscious inheritance of culture, analyst--the
kulturverlaengerung. And you have accused me for being a carrier of the
war plague, eh?"
Meikl paused. The baron's eyes were narrowed, stabbing as if in judgment
or triumph.
"Well, Meikl? Is that what we've done? Inflicted them with conflict?
Brought back the old seeds of hate?"
The analyst drew himself up slightly. "You just killed a man, a man of
dignity," he snarled, "and you cut two others down like weeds."
"Innocent old men." The baron's mouth twisted into a snarl.
"They wanted nothing but to help us."
"Yes, Meikl? And we are the barbarians, eh?"
The analyst spoke disdain with his eyes.
The baron straightened in sudden hauteur. "_Look down at the ground,
Analyst_," he hissed.
Ven Klaeden's sudden change of tone impelled him to obey. His eyes fell
to the turf at his feet--moss covered sod, rich and dark beneath the
green.
The baron kicked a hole in the moss with the toe of his boot. "Tell me
where the infection came from, Analyst," he growled. He scraped at the
hole with his heel. "And why is the dirt so _red_ right here?"
Meikl glanced up slowly. Two men were coming through the shrubs, walking
warily along the path toward the clearing. Ven Klaeden seemed unaware.
He leaned forward to speak through his teeth.
"I give them nothing but what they gave our fathers--their own inner
hell, Meikl--the curse they so carefully forgot. In their Eden."
The man was mad ... perhaps. Meikl's eyes followed the men who
approached through the shrubs. One of them carried a burden--the limp
body of a girl, occasionally visible through the low foliage as they
drew nearer. One of the men was a junior officer, the other a native.
After a moment, he recognized the native....
"Evon!"
As he called out, the baron whirled, hand slipping to the hilt of the
ceremonial sword he wore in the presence of the Geoark. The men stopped.
Meikl stared at the limp figure in the arms of the native.
"_Letha!_"
"Dead," Evon hissed. "They killed her for running...."
They emerged from the shrubs into full view. The officer was holding a
gun.
"Put that away!" ven Klaeden snapped.
The young officer laughed sourly. "Sorry, baron, I'm from the
committee."
"_Guard!_"
"There's no one in earshot, Baron."
"Fool!" Ven Klaeden arrogantly whipped out the sword. "Drop that gun, or
I'll blade-whip you!"
"Easy, baron, easy. I'm your executioner...."
The baron straightened haughtily and began a slow advance, a towering
figure of icy dignity in the sun that filtered through the foliage.
"... but I want to take care of this one first." The renegade waved the
gun toward Meikl. "You, Baron, you can have it slower--a needle in your
official rump."
Ven Klaeden, a figure of utter contempt, continued the slow advance with
the sword. The officer's lips tightened. He squeezed the trigger. Ven
Klaeden hesitated, jerking slightly, then continued, his hand pressing
against his abdomen, doubling forward slightly. The officer fired
again--a sharp snap of sound in the glade. The baron stopped, wrestling
with pain ten feet from the pale renegade.
Suddenly he flung the sword. It looped in mid-air and slashed the man's
face from chin to cheekbone. He tripped and tumbled backward as ven
Klaeden slipped to his knees on the moss.
Meikl dived for the gun. By the time he wrestled it away from the
officer with the bloody face, ven Klaeden was sitting like a gaunt
Buddha on the moss, and the body of Letha lay nearby, while a confused
Evon clutched his hands to his face and rocked slowly. Meikl came slowly
to his feet. The renegade officer wiped his face of blood and shrank
back into shrubs.
"Get him," croaked ven Klaeden.
Scarcely knowing why, the analyst jerked the trigger, felt the gun
explode in his fist, saw the renegade topple.
There was a moment of stillness in the glade, broken only by ven
Klaeden's wheezing breath. The baron looked up with an effort, his eyes
traveling over the girl, then up to the figure of the child of Earth.
"Your woman, Earthling?"
Evon lowered his hands, stood dazed and blinking for a moment. He
glanced at Meikl, then at the girl. He knelt beside her, staring, not
touching, and his knee encountered the blade of the sword.
"You have brought us death, you have brought us hate," he said slowly,
his eyes clinging to the sword.
"Pick it up," hissed the baron.
"You will never leave. A party of men is wrecking what you have done.
Then we shall wreck your ships. Then we...."
"Pick it up."
The native hesitated. Slowly, his brown hand reached for the hilt, and
fascination was in his eyes.
"You know what it is for?" the analyst asked.
The native shook his head slowly.
Then it was in his hand, fingers shaping themselves around the hilt--as
the fingers of his fathers had done in the ages before the Star Exodus.
His jaw fell slightly, and he looked up, clutching it.
"_Now_ do you know?" the baron gasped.
"My--my hand--_it_ knows," the native whispered.
Ven Klaeden glanced sourly at Meikl, losing his balance slightly, eyes
glazed with pain. "He'll need it now, won't he, Analyst?" he breathed,
then fell to the moss.
Evon stood up slowly, moistening his lips, feeling the grip of the sword
and touching the red-stained steel. He peered quickly up at Meikl. Meikl
brandished the gun slightly.
The low rumble of a dynamite blast sounded from the direction of the
mines.
"You loved her too," Evon said.
He nodded.
The native held the sword out questioningly, as if offering it.
"Keep it," the analyst grunted. "You remembered its feel after twenty
thousand years. That's why you'll need it."
Some deeds, he thought, would haunt the soul of Man until his end, and
there was no erasing them ... for they _were_ the soul, self-made,
lasting in the ghost-grey fabric of mind as long as the lips of a child
greedily sought the breast of its mother, as long as the child mirrored
the mind of the man and the woman. _Kulturverlaengerung._
The analyst left the native with the sword and went to seek the next in
line of command. The purpose of the fleet must be kept intact, he
thought, laughing bitterly. Yet still he went.