"The Space Barbarians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

Chapter Six

John of the Hawks brought his steed to a halt and looked up at the looming spaceship. As before, the ramp was down and the entry open, though no one was in sight He wondered vaguely at the arrogance of the strangers from Beyond. Did they believe themselves immune to raid?

He dismounted and turned to the other horse and its burden. As gently as was possible, he worked at the litter, unbinding the unconscious Don, taking him in arms. There was a nauseating stench of putrefying flesh.

He slung his companion in arms over his left shoulder, so that his right hand could be free, and began the ascent of the ramp.

The ship’s defenses were not as negligent as all that. As he reached the entry port, two of the strangers from Beyond stepped forth. Both were dressed in the clothing of Harmon, the dark garb of the acolyte of the religion of the Shrine of Kalkin. However, neither was of the caliber of the guru or his orange clad assistants. At least, so their expressions suggested.

Nor were their voices exactly the gentle tones of Mark.

One said, “Where do you think you’re going, big boy?”

John came to a halt and said, “I have come to cure the fleshrot in the autohospital told of by Guru of the Marks.”

The second of the strangers wrinkled up his nose. “If you think you’re going to bring that stinking specimen into this ship, you’re more of a dully than you look.”

The other one said, “None of the monks are around, big boy. Go on over to town, there’s a couple of them there. They’ll take care of you.”

John said evenly, “I am not of Nairn. I am of the Hawk Clann of Aberdeen. I have ridden far to reach the auto-hospital, and my comrade is near death.”

“That’s too bad, but you’re not coming into the Revelation. Skipper’s orders. No Caledonians inside the ship, unless the guru personally brings them in.”

The bleakness of the wastelands in his voice, John said, “I take my blood comrade to the autohospital, man from Beyond. I suggest you do not attempt to hinder me.”

The other answered that by darting his hand inside his jerkin. But he reckoned without the abilities of the most celebrated war cacique of Aberdeen. His handgun had hardly cleared his clothing before he felt the sharp sting of the skean bite deep into his side, then rip toward his belly. All turned black, even as he caved forward.

His dagger free again, John of the Hawks turned to the other, the bleakness in his eyes now. “You will lead us to the autohospital, man from Beyond, or you will share the fate of your fellow.”

The other was obviously a slink, John of the Hawks realized. His whiteness of face proclaimed that. He turned and started down the metal corridor, his shoulders held in such wise that he was obviously afraid of having the clannsman behind him, expecting momentarily to feel the skean in his back. John sneered his contempt and shifted the body of Don of the Clarks slightly, to relieve the cramp of his burden, for his blood comrade was no small man.

The corridor was long and unrelieved by other than periodic doors. They tramped along wordlessly.

At long last they reached a portal somewhat larger than the others, and the spaceman turned, his face surly. “This is the entry to the autohospital,” he said.

“Very well. Lead the way.”

The other shrugged and opened the door and entered, John Immediately behind. The man from Beyond stood to one side.

The room was fairly large, furnished considerably as Mark the guru had furnished John’s living quarters in Aberdeen, that is, with equipment obviously of a medical nature, though not understood by John—with metal files, and medicine chest and all spotlessly sterile.

And in the center of the room, a sardonic twist on his mouth, stood Harmon, a weapon in his hand directed at the belly of the Caledonian.

“Welcome to the Revelation, John of the Hawks,” he said.

John looked at him.

Harmon said, “Did you labor under the illusion that you could force your way into a spaceship without setting off alarms? Are you so empty that you couldn’t guess that every word you’ve spoken since you entered the ship has been picked up?”

John said, “I have brought Don, Sagamore of the Clarks, to be treated in the autohospital, Mister of the Harmons.”

The other spaceman blurted, “He knifed Petersen. I think he’s dead. Give him the flamer, Skipper!”

Harmon said thoughtfully, “I don’t think the guru would approve of that, Jim. Besides, it would dinge up our image with the locals. Remember our bit, thou shalt not harm.”

“But he finished Petersen!”

“In honorable defense,” John said. “He drew his weapon.”

Harmon stepped back and sat down in a chair, his gun still at the ready and his face thoughtful.

“A sagamore, eh?” he said. “That’s kind of a subwar-chief, isn’t it? And you’re raid cacique of your clann, aren’t you, John? It occurs to me that you are two of the top bullyboys of Aberdeen.”

John, ignoring the other’s hand weapon, stepped over to the white sheeted operating table and deposited Don there, making the unconscious clannsman as comfortable as possible. He turned then, back to the Revelation’s captain.

“He is dying,” he said. “Where is the autohospital?”

Harmon nodded toward a door studded with dials, switches, small wheels, meaningless to John of the Hawks. “In there,” he said.

John said, “We must hurry, or he is dead.”

Harmon said musingly, “It would be quite impressive if the two of you returned to Aberdeen as loyal followers of Lord Krishna, wouldn’t it?”

John stared at him.

Harmon jiggled his weapon. “Jim,” he said, “help this overgrown dully put his friend in the autohospital and activate it.”

Jim growled, “He knifed Petersen.”

“Forget about Petersen. Evidently, it’s too late to worry about him now.”

Grumbling, the spaceman opened the indicated door and motioned to John, who took up Don in his arms, as a baby is taken up, and carried him into the small compartment beyond. The interior was only bewildering to him. However, there was another metal bed.

“Take his clothes off,” Jim directed sourly. “Bandages and all.”

He will bleed to death!

“He won’t have time to. The minute we step out of here he begins to get blood transfusions.” The other began to throw various switches.

John obeyed orders.

“All right,” the one addressed as Jim said. “Now get on out.”

Back in the room with Harmon, John watched as the spaceman closed the door, isolating Don of the Clarkes.

John said, “What happens now?”

Harmon said, “Over there. Sit down, where I can watch you. Jim, get back to Petersen. If he’s still alive, get one of the other boys and get Petersen into the autohospital. If he isn’t, put him in Disposal and get back to your watch. We’re short handed with so many out spreading the good word of Lord Krishna.”

Jim left, and John of the Hawks seated himself as directed, keeping his eyes on Harmon.

Harmon jiggled his gun again in an amused fashion and smiled mockingly at the clannsman. “What happens now? We wait about an hour or so, and then your buddy buddy comes out all whole again. And then the two of you take your soma and return to Aberdeen to set a good example. Six months from now, oh, perhaps a year, and you’ll both be working in the new mines, all civilized, along with everybody else on Caledonia.”

“What is this civilized?” John said. Inwardly, he quailed, but he would have been shamed to have the other see it. He knew the power of the other’s weapon. It was what DeRudder had once called a flamer. But it was not the gun that caused him to feel a slink, but the other’s threat to make both him and Don take the dreaded soma.

“Civilized?” Harmon said, a cynical grin on his face. “You wouldn’t know, would you? We’ve got time to kill, John of the Hawks, so I’ll tell you a story. It’s a story about you. You and the rest of Caledonia. I think I’ve got it reconstructed fairly well. Krishna knows, it’s taken me the better part of the past ten years to trace it down. It started some centuries ago, when one of the early colonist ships, the Inverness Ark, was thrown out of warp and wound up here, far, far from where it was headed. The ship crashed, and it must have been one dilly of a crackup, since evidently things were destroyed to the point where they only rescued four books.”

“The four Holy Books, you mean?” John said.

Harmon laughed. “A volume of quatrains by an ancient Persian, an epic poem by a British romantic period writer named Scott, Ancient Society, an early work on American ethnology, and a volume by H. J. Muller on genetics. Holy Books! What a combination upon which to base a whole culture!”

John didn’t understand the amusement, but he said, “Go on with the story, Mister of the Harmons.”

“Of course. Practically everything must have been lost, and in the attempt to survive, a tribal culture based strongly on ritual and taboo evolved. The earliest of the Caledonians—that name, and other names you use, bear out the fact that most of the colonists were Scottish—must have understood your books well enough to take steps to strengthen your bloodlines by diffusing the genes as universally as possible. They adopted a gens system, based on Morgan’s anthropological work among the Amerinds.”

John, scowling and getting only a portion of the other’s meaning, said, “You mean the holy man, Lewis of the Morgans?”

Harmon laughed. “Is that what you call him? At any rate, the steps taken to preserve the colonists from interbreeding resulted in your society becoming ossified. You’re at about the same stage of development as the Iroquois, although you’ve got a few things, such as gunpowder and the working of metals, that they hadn’t.”

The skipper of the Revelation yawned. “However, that’ll all end now. We’ll bring you out of barbarism and into civilization in one generation. The last generation, in fact. After that, Caledonia will have to be colonized all over again, soma being soma.”

John said, “What is this soma that you intend to force us to take?”

Harmon jiggled his gun again. “Soma, my friend, is the most notable of the psychedelics, or hallucinogens, if you will.” He pointed with his gun. “Over there, on the table.”

John looked. On the small table indicated were two of what looked to be tablets of sugar.

“I got them out for you and your brawny friend,” Harmon said in mock agreeableness.

“What is a hallucinogen?” John said.

“Well, it’s a long and interesting story,” Harmon said. “Man’s history does not go back far enough to give the origins. Indeed, some scholars, such as the early Englishman Robert Graves, explored the idea that the raw mushroom amanita muscaria was the so-called ambrosia of the worshipers of Dionysus and that the Eleusinian, Orphic and other mysteries associated with Dionysus were all based on eating this early hallucinogen. Indeed, the eating of the mushroom psilocybe by the Masatec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico, invoking the mushroom god Tlaloc, was very similar. Fascinating subject, don’t you think, John of the Hawks?”

John realized the other was cozening him, but he kept his peace.

“My own belief,” Harmon continued, “is that the guru is correct when he tells us that the soma of the early Indus Valley civilization was a hallucinogen that so affected the people that they could not bring themselves to violence. Thus it was that when the, ah, impetuous Aryans came down from the north they found such towns as Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa without even walls in the way of defense. Archaeologists, in excavating the Indus Valley towns, find much in the way of art and artifacts, practically nothing in the way of weapons. You see, soma then, as now, so affected its takers that they could subscribe only to the, ah, you would call it a bann, ‘thou shalt not harm.’ The tradition of being vegetarians came down well into historic times among the Hindu Indians.”

John said evenly, “I do not understand much of what you say, Mister of the Harmons. I suspect you jest at me and remind you that already we carry the bloodfeud.”

Harmon chuckled. “Another hour or so, my outsized lad, and you will feud never again, neither with me nor anyone else. A great prospect, eh? But to get back to our hallucinogens. One of the earliest was cannabis sativa, known variously as hemp, kif, bhang, hashish, ganja, charas and marihuana in its various forms. A rather mild hallucinogen, as a matter of fact, though the ambitious Hasan-i-Sabbah is said to have put it to profitable use. Ah, it is from his name we derive the term assassin.”

He was obviously enjoying himself. “Then, of course, there was peyote, beloved of the Amerinds but not really to come into its own until mescaline, its active ingredient, was extracted in the laboratory. In fact, the hallucinogens as a whole didn’t achieve to their heights until they were taken up by the scientists, and the whole field of biochemistry was precipitated into a new look at the brain. The real breakthrough took place when a new compound of lysergic acid, derived from a common fungus called ergot, was synthesized. Lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, if you will.”

John said, “You mock me, Mister of the Harmons, with your unknown words; however, you have still to tell of this soma.”

Harmon jiggled his weapon in amusement. “But that is what I have been telling you, friend John. Soma is king of them all. He who takes soma is cured of all mental ills. He, ah, reaches nirvana while still on this mortal coil, so to speak. All passions are beyond him.”

“All passions?” John was scowling. “You mean that even sex becomes meaningless? The love between man and woman?”

“Exactly. That and all other passions, my bullyboy, as you are soon to discover. But not just sex becomes meaningless, but the desire for, well, say, fame, power, wealth. All things that ordinarily men strive for become meaningless when one has walked with Lord Krishna.”

Inadvertently, John ran a tongue over his dry lips. “That is nonsense. It is but a saying, walking with Krishna.”

Harmon grinned mockingly. “To the contrary. Evidently, when one takes soma he actually, in his hallucinations, thinks he meets and talks and walks with Lord Krishna, who explains all to him.”

“All of what?”

Harmon shrugged. “But how would I know? As yet I have not taken soma. Perhaps when I am an old man, and free of human passions, I will. But for just now, no, thank you. I feel as do most. I can wait awhile.”

John said very evenly, “But if the relationship between man and woman became meaningless, then there would be no succeeding generations.”

Harmon smiled jovially. “Of course, but that is not deemed of importance to the guru and the others who worship at the Shrine of Kalkin. The sooner all are gathered to the bosom of Kalkin and are united in one transcendent, ah, soul, the better.”

There is a great difference between a warrior born and a soldier trained. Harmon, as a younger man, had once taken military training on one of the more backward planets belonging to the League. However, it would not have occurred to him to rush a man who had him covered with a weapon as deadly as a flamer. Nor would he have dreamed that a man as large as John of the Hawks could move so fast.

He jiggled the hand weapon once too often. Momentarily, the muzzle was directed at the ceiling.

The weapon flamed briefly, a pencil of light and heat, but Harmon had not the time to direct it with accuracy. John of the Hawks was upon him—less than gently. A fist the size of a quart container banged upon the side of his head, and he went under into temporary oblivion.

John stared down at him momentarily, then stooped and swept up the gun and stuck it in his belt. He went to the small table upon whose top sat the two soma pills and picked one of them up. He stooped down again and pried open the fallen man’s mouth and popped the pill inside.

“If you choke on that, so much the better.” he growled.

He stood for a moment in thought, then returned to his chair and sat himself again, waiting patiently for Jim or one of the other members of the Revelation’s crew.

They took almost as long to return to Aberdeen as they had taken on the way to the spaceship, since, although Don of the Clarks was healed in body, he was still weak from loss of blood and from his descent so deep into the valley of death.

They talked it out considerably on the way and had reached conclusions by the time they came up to the gates of Aberdeen.

“We have the means now to rally the clannsmen,” John of the Hawks had said. “We shall recommend to the muster that two criers go forth at greatest speed to Caithness and to Dumbarton, one to each, and spread the word of warning. Caithness will send forth, by fastest steed, two criers to give warning to two other towns, and Dumbarton will do the same. And thus, on and on. Each town will warn two more. Within three months, surely every phylum on Caledonia will have had the warning.”

“Aüi,” Don said grimly. “And it will not be too soon, for by that time, how many will have taken this accursed soma?”

“Too many,” John admitted. “But there is naught else we can do.”

“And then what?”

“Then the plans of these otherworldings will be thwarted—for the time, at least.”

Don looked at him questioningly.

John said, “But they will come again. And next time, undoubtedly, in other guise. We must prepare, Don of the Clarks.”

“Prepare? Prepare for what? And how?”

“Some of the old ways must go. No longer is Caledonia unknown to these men from Beyond. They know we are here, and some, at least, yearn for our resources. To repel them we must change many of the old ways.”

Don stared at him. “But that is against the bann!”

John said, “That is one of the institutions that must go.”

When they reached the gates of Aberdeen, John shouted loudly, “As Raid Cacique of the Hawks, I summon the muster for emergency council!”

A crier who had been standing nearby dashed for the town square to sound the conch.

Dewey came riding up, grinning elation. “John! The Keepers of the Faith have ruled! Our raid was not against the bann! I am to be raised to sagamore at the next muster, and it is rumored Don of the Clarks will be made a raid cacique! Your exploits are being sung by the bards!”

“Aüi!” John yelped. He leaped to the ground and threw the reins of his horse to his kynsman. “Here, take the animal. Meet me at the square in but five minutes, for the muster. I go to see Alice of the Thompsons.”

He ran for his longhouse, even as the conch began to sound, summoning the phyletics.

He banged into the great hall of the Clann Hawk and hurried to the door of Robert, the sachem. Without knocking, he dashed in.

She was there, alone, in the living room. And at his entry, looked up, her eyes shining.

He came to her. “Alice!” He put his hands on her shoulders. “The Keepers of the Faith have ruled that you can honorably be my bride.”

There was a serene quality in her face that he didn’t quite understand. He said, “Alice, what’s wrong?”

She said gently, “Nothing is wrong, John of the Hawks. And nothing will ever be wrong for me again. I walk in the path of Lord Krishna.”