"Henry Kuttner - Clash by Night (SS Collection) UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

CLASH BY NIGHT

The whole system of which he was a part was doomed, he knew - a mercenary army that fought other mercenary armies for cities that lay beneath Ihe seas of Venus. Yet - there was a fascination and a reasonless loyalty to that futile system that held him.

INTRODUCTION
A half mile beneath the shallow Venusian Sea the black impervium dome that protects Montana Keep rests frowningly on the bottom. Within the Keep is carnival, for the Montanans celebrate the four-hundred-year anniversary of Earthman's landing on Venus. Under the great dome that houses the city all is light and colour and gaiety. Masked men and women, bright in celoflex and silks, wander through the broad streets, laughing, drinking the strong native wines of Venus. The sea bottom has been combed, like the hydroponic tanks, for rare delicacies to grace the tables of the nobles.
Through the festival grim shadows stalk, men whose faces mark them unmistakably as members of a Free Company. Their finery cannot disguise that stamp, hard-won through years of battle. Under the domino masks their mouths are hard and harsh. Unlike the undersea dwellers, their skins are burned black with the ultraviolet rays that filter through the cloud layer of Venus. They are skeletons at the feast.
They are respected but resented. They are Free Companions . . .
We are on Venus, nine hundred years ago, beneath the Sea of Shoals, not much north of the equator. But there is a wide range in time and space. All over the cloud planet the underwater Keeps are dotted, and life will not change for many centuries. Looking back, as we do now, from the civilized days of the Thirty-fourth Century, it is too easy to regard the men of the Keeps as savages, groping, stupid and brutal. The Free Companies have long since vanished. The islands and continents of Venus have been tamed, and there is no war.
But in periods of transition, of desperate rivalry, there is always war. The Keeps fought among themselves, each striving to draw the fangs of the others by depriving them of their reserves of korium, the power source of the day. Students of that era find pleasure in sifting the legends and winnowing out the basic social and geopolitical truths. It is fairly well known that only one factor saved the Keeps from annihilating one another - the gentlemen's agreement that left war to the warriors, and allowed the undersea cities to develop their science and social cultures. That particular compromise was, perhaps, inevitable. And it caused the organization of the Free Companies, the roving bands of mercenaries, highly trained for their duties, who hired themselves out to fight for whatever Keeps were attacked or wished to attack.
Ap Towrn, in his monumental 'Cycle of Venus,' tells the saga through symbolic legends. Many historians have recorded the sober truth, which unfortunately seems often Mars-dry. But it is not generally realized that the Free Companions were almost directly responsible for our present high culture. War, because of them, was not permitted to usurp the place of peace-time social and scientific work. Fighting was highly specialized, and, because of technical advances, manpower was no longer important. Each band of Free Companions numbered a few thousand, seldom more.
It was a strange, lonely life they must have led, shut out
from the normal life of the Keeps. They were vestigian but necessary, like the fangs of the marsupians who eventually evolved into Homo sapiens. But without those warriors, the Keeps would have been plunged completely into total war, with fatally destructive results.
Harsh, gallant, indomitable, serving the god of battles so that it might be destroyed - working toward their own obliteration - the Free Companies roar down the pages of history, the banner of Mars streaming above them in the misty air of Venus. They were doomed as Tyrannosaur Rex was doomed, and they fought on as he did, serving, in their strange way, the shape of Minerva that stood behind Mars.
Now they are gone. We can learn much by studying the place they held in the Undersea Period. For, because of them, civilization rose again to the heights it had once reached on Earth, and far beyond.
'These lords shall light the mystery Of mastery or victory, And these ride high in history, But these shall not return.'
The Free Companions hold their place in interplanetary literature. They are a legend now, archaic and strange. For they were fighters, and war has gone with unification. But we can understand them a little more than could the people of the Keeps.
This story, built on legends and fact, is about a typical warrior of the period- Captain Brian Scott of Doone's Free Companions. He may never have existed-
I
O, it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Tommy, go away'; But it's 'Thank you, Mr. Atkins,' when the band begins to play, The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play- O, ifs 'Thank you, Mr. Atkins,' when the band begins to play.
-R. Kipling circa 1900
Scott drank stinging uisqueplus and glowered across the
smoky tavern. He was a hard, stocky man, with thick grey-shot brown hair and the scar of an old wound crinkling his chin. He was thirty-odd, looking like the veteran he was, and he had sense enough to wear a plain suit of blue celoflex, rather than the garish silks and rainbow fabrics that were all around him.
Outside, through the transparent walls, a laughing throng was carried to and fro along the movable ways. But in the tavern it was silent, except for the low voice of a harpman as he chanted some old ballad, accompanying himself on his complicated instrument. The song came to an end. There was scattered applause, and from the hot-box overhead the blaring music of an orchestra burst out. Instantly the restraint was gone. In the booths and at the bar men and women began to laugh and talk with casual unrestraint. Couples were dancing now.
The girl beside Scott, a slim, tan-skinned figure with glossy black ringlets cascading to her shoulders, turned inquiring eyes to him.
'Want to, Brian?'
Scott's mouth twisted in a wry grimace. 'Suppose so, Jeana. Eh?' He rose, and she came gracefully into his arms. Brian did not dance too well, but what he lacked in practice he made up in integration. Jeana's heart-shaped face, with its high cheekbones and vividly crimson lips, lifted to him.
'Forget Bienne. He's just trying to ride you.'
Scott glanced toward a distant booth, where two girls sat with a man - Commander Fredric Bienne of the Doones. He was a gaunt, tall, bitter-faced man, his regular features twisted into a perpetual sneer, his eyes sombre under heavy dark brows. He was pointing now, toward the couple on the floor.
'I know,' Scott said. 'He's doing it, too. Well, the hell with him. So I'm a captain now and he's still a commander. That's tough. Next time he'll obey orders and not send his ship out of the line, trying to ram.'
'That was it, eh?' Jeana asked. 'I wasn't sure. There's plenty of talk.'
'There always is. Oh, Bienne's hated me for years. I reciprocate. We simply don't get on together. Never did. Every time I got a promotion, he chewed his nails. Figured he had a longer service record than I had, and deserved to move up faster. But he's too much of an individualist - at the wrong times.'
'He's drinking a lot,' Jeana said.
'Let him. Three months we've been in Montana Keep. The boys get tired of inaction- being treated like this.' Scott nodded toward the door, where a Free Companion was arguing with the keeper. 'No noncoms allowed in here. Well, the devil with it.'
They could not hear the conversation above the hubbub, but its importance was evident. Presently the soldier shrugged, his mouth forming a curse, and departed. A fat man in scarlet silks shouted encouragement.
'-want any . . . Companions here!'
Scott saw Commander Bienne, his eyes half closed, get up and walk toward the fat man's booth. His shoulder moved in an imperceptible shrug. The hell with civilians, anyhow. Serve the lug right if Bienne smashed his greasy face. And that seemed the probable outcome. For the fat man was accompanied by a girl, and obviously wasn't going to back down, though Bienne, standing too close to him, was saying something insulting, apparently.
The auxiliary hot-box snapped some quick syllables, lost in the general tumult. But Scott's trained ear caught the words. He nodded to Jeana, made a significant clicking noise with his tongue, and said, 'This is it.'
She, too, had heard. She let Scott go. He headed toward the fat man's booth just in time to see the beginning of a brawl. The civilian, red as a turkey cock, had struck out suddenly, landing purely by accident on Bienne's gaunt cheek. The commander, grinning tightly, stepped back a pace, his fist clenching. Scott caught the other's arm.
'Hold it, commander.'
Bienne swung around, glaring. 'What business is it of yours? Let-'
The fat man, seeing his opponent's attention distracted, acquired more courage and came in swinging. Scott reached past Bienne, planted his open hand in the civilian's face, and pushed hard. The fat man almost fell backward on his table.
As he rebounded he saw a gun in Scott's hand. The captain said curtly,' 'Tend to your knitting, mister.'
The civilian licked his lips, hesitated, and sat down. Under his breath he muttered something about too-damn-cocky Free Companions.
Bienne was trying to break free, ready to swing on the captain. Scott bolstered his gun. 'Orders,' he told the other, jerking his head toward the hot-box. 'Get it?'
'-mobilization. Doonemen report to headquarters. Captain Scott to Administration. Immediate mobilization-'
'Oh,' Bienne said, though he still scowled. 'O.K. I'll take over. There was time for me to take a crack at that louse, though.'
'You know what instant mobilization means,' Scott grunted. 'We may have to leave at an instant's notice. Orders, commander.'
Bienne saluted halfheartedly and turned away. Scott went back to his own booth. Jeana had already gathered her handbag and gloves and was applying lip juice.