Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (59 page)

“Where you think you’re going, Smiley? What you got there?” He did not recognize Jalun; to Terrans all Joilani looked alike. “Commandeh say foh you, seh. Say, celeb’ation. Say take to offiseh fi’st.”

“Let’s see.”

Trembling with the effort to control himself, smiling painfully from ear to ear, Jalun unfolded a corner of the cloth.

The spacer peered, whistled. “If that’s what I think it is, sweet stars of home. Lieutenant!” he shouted, hustling Jalun up and into the ship. “Look what the boss sent us!”

In the wardroom the lieutenant and another spacer were checking over the microsource charts. The lieutenant also was wearing a weapons belt—good again. Listening carefully, Jalun’s keen Joilani hearing could detect no other Terrans on the ship. He bowed deeply, still smiling his hate, and unwrapped his packet before the lieutenant.

Nestled in snowy linen lay a small tear-shaped amethyst flask.

“Commandeh say, foh you. Say must d’ink now, is open.”

The lieutenant whistled in his turn, and picked the flask up reverently.

“Do you know what this is, old Smiley?”

“No, seh,” Jalun lied.

“What is it, sir?” the third spacer asked. Jalun could see that he was very young.

“This, sonny, is the most unbelievable, most precious, most delectable drink that will ever pass your dewy gullet. Haven’t you ever heard of Stars Tears?”

The youngster stared at the flask, his face clouding.

“And Smiley’s right,” the lieutenant went on. “Once it’s open, you have to drink it right away. Well, I guess we’ve done all we need to tonight. I must say, the old man left us a generous go. Why did he say he sent this, Juloo boy?”

“Celeb’ation, seh. Say his celeb’ation, his day.”

“Some celebration. Well, let us not quibble over miracles. Jon, produce three liquor cups.
Clean
ones.”

“Yes
sir
!” The big spacer rummaged in the lockers overhead.

Standing child-size among these huge Terrans, Jalun was overcome again by the contrast between their size and strength and perfection and his own weak-limbed, frail, slope-shouldered little form. Among his people he had been accounted a strong youth; even now he was among the ablest. But to these mighty Terrans, Joilani strength was a joke. Perhaps they were right; perhaps he was of an inferior race, fit only to be slaves. . . . But then Jalun remembered what he knew, and straightened his short spine. The younger spacer was saying something.

“Lieutenant, sir, if that’s really Stars Tears I can’t drink it.”

“You can’t
drink
it? Why not?”

“I promised. I, uh, swore.”

“You’d promise such an insane thing?”

“My—my mother,” the youngster said miserably.

The two others shouted with laughter.

“You’re a long way from home now, son,” the lieutenant said kindly. “What am I saying, Jon? We’d be delighted to take yours. But I just can’t bear to see a man pass up the most beautiful thing in life, and I mean bar none. Forget Mommy and prepare your soul for bliss. That’s an order. . . . All right, Smiley boy, equal shares. And if you spill one drop I’ll
dicty
both your little
pnonks
, hear?”

“Yes, seh.” Carefully Jalun poured the loathsome liquor into the small cups.

“You ever tasted this, Juloo?”

“No, seh.”

“And never will. All right, now scat. Ah-h-h . . . Well, here’s to our next station, may it have real live poogy on it.”

Jalun went silently back down into the shadows of the gangway, paused where he could just see the spacers lift their cups and drink. Hate and disgust choked him, though he had seen it often: Terrans eagerly drinking Stars Tears. It was the very symbol of their oblivious cruelty, their fall from
Jailasanatha
. They could not be excused for ignorance; too many of them had told Jalun how Stars Tears was made. It was not tears precisely, but the body secretions of a race of beautiful, frail winged creatures on a very distant world. Under physical or mental pain their glands exuded this liquid which the Terrans found so deliciously intoxicating. To obtain it, a mated pair were captured and slowly tortured to death in each other’s sight. Jalun had been told atrocious details which he could not bear to recall.

Now he watched, marveling that the hate burning in his eyes did not alert the Terrans. He was quite certain that the drug was tasteless and did no harm; careful trials over the long years had proved that. The problem was that it took from two to five minims to work. The last-affected Terran might have time to raise an alarm. Jalun would die to prevent that—if he could.

The three spacers’ faces had changed; their eyes shone.

“You see, son?” the lieutenant asked huskily.

The boy nodded, his rapt gaze on nowhere.

Suddenly the big spacer Jon lunged up and said thickly, “What?” Then he slumped down with his head on one outstretched arm.

“Hey! Hey, Jon!” The lieutenant rose, reaching toward him. But then he too was falling heavily across the wardroom table. That left only the staring boy.

Would he act, would he seize the caller? Jalun gathered himself to spring, knowing he could do little but die in those strong hands.

But the boy only repeated, “What? . . . What?” Lost in a private dream, he leaned back, slid downward, and began to snore.

Jalun darted up to them and snatched the weapons from the two huge lax bodies. Then he scrambled up to the cruiser’s control room, summoning all the memorized knowledge that had been gained over the slow years. Yes—that was the transmitter. He wrestled its hood off and began firing into its works. The blast of the weapon frightened him, but he kept on till all was charred and melted.

The flight computer next. Here he had trouble burning in, but soon achieved what seemed to be sufficient damage. A nearby metal case fastened to what was now the ceiling bothered him. It had not been included in his instructions—because the Joilani had not learned of the cruiser’s new backup capability. Jalun gave it only a perfunctory blast, and turned to the weapons console.

Emotions he had never felt before were exploding in him, obscuring sight and reason. He fired at wild random across the board, concentrating on whatever would explode or melt, not realizing that he had left the heavy-weapons wiring essentially undamaged. Pinned-up pictures of the grotesque Terran females, which had done his people so much harm, he flamed to ashes.

Then he did the most foolish thing.

Instead of hurrying straight back down through the wardroom, he paused to stare at the slack face of the spacer who had savaged his young. His weapon was hot in his hand. Madness took Jalun: he burned through face and skull. The release of a lifetime’s helpless hatred seemed to drive him on wings of flame. Beyond all reality, he killed the other two Terrans without pausing and hurried on down.

He was quite insane with rage and self-loathing when he reached the reactor chambers. Forgetting the hours of painful memorization of the use of the waldo arms, he went straight in through the shielding port to the pile itself. Here he began to tug with his bare hands at the damping rods, as if he were a suited Terran. But his Joilani strength was far too weak, and he could barely move them. He raged, fired at the pile, tugged again, his body bare to the full fury of radiation.

When presently the rest of the Terran crew poured into the ship they found a living corpse clawing madly at the pile. He had removed only four rods; instead of a meltdown he had achieved nothing at all.

The engineer took one look at Jalun through the vitrex and swung the heavy waldo arm over to smash him into the wall. Then he replaced the rods, checked his readouts, and signaled: Ready to lift.

There was also great danger that the Terrans would signal to one of their mighty warships, which alone can send a missile seeking through tau-space. An act of infamy was faced.

The Elder Jayakal entered the communications chamber just as the Terran operator completed his regular transmission for the period. That had been carefully planned. First, it would insure the longest possible interval before other stations became alarmed. Equally important, the Joilani had been unable to discover a way of entry to the chamber when the operator was not there.

“Hey, Pops, what do you think you’re doing? You know you’re not supposed to be in here. Scoot!”

Jayakal smiled broadly in the pain of his heart. This Terran She’gan had been kind to the Joilani in his rough way. Kind and respectful. He knew them by their proper names; he had never abused their females; he fed cleanly, and did not drink abomination. He had even inquired, with decorum, into the sacred concepts:
Jailasanatha
, the Living-with-in-honor, the Oneness-of-love. Old Jayakal’s flexible cheekbones drew upward in a beaming rictus of shame.

“O gentle friend, I come to share with you,” he said ritually. “You know I don’t really divvy your speech. Now you have to get out.”

Jayakal knew no Terran word for
sharing;
perhaps there was none.

“F’iend, I b’ing you thing.”

“Yeah, well bring it me
outside
.” Seeing that the old Joilani did not move, the operator rose to usher him out. But memory stirred; his understanding of the true meaning of that smile penetrated. “What is it, Jayakal? What you got there?”

Jayakal brought the heavy load in his hands forward.

“Death.”

“What-where did you get that? Oh, holy mother, get away from me! That thing is armed!
The pin is out –”

The laboriously pilfered and hoarded excavating plastic had been well and truly assembled; the igniter had been properly attached. In the ensuing explosion, fragments of the whole transmitter complex, mingled with those of Jayakal and his Terran friend, rained down across the Terran compound and out among the
amlat
fields.

Spacers and station personnel erupted out of the post bars, at first uncertain in the darkness what to do. Then they saw torches flaring and bobbing around the transformer sheds. Small gray figures were running, leaping, howling, throwing missiles that flamed.

“The crotting Juloos are after the power plant! Come on!”

Other diversions were planned. The names of the Old Ones and damaged females who died thus for us are inscribed on the sacred rolls. We can only pray that they found quick and merciful deaths.

The station commander’s weapons belt hung over the chair by his bed. All through the acts of shame and pain Sosalal had been watching it, waiting for her chance. If only Bislat, the commander’s “boy,” could come in to help her! But he could not—he was needed at the ship.

The commander’s lust was still unsated. He gulped a drink from the vile little purple flask, and squinted his small Terran eyes meaningfully at her. Sosalal smiled, and offered her trembling, grotesquely disfigured body once more. But no: he wanted her to stimulate him. She set her emphatic Joilani fingers, her shuddering mouth, to do their work, hoping that the promised sound would come soon, praying that the commander’s communicator would not buzz with the news of the attempt failed. Why, oh why, was it taking so long? She wished she could have one last sight of the Terran’s great magical star projection, which showed at one far side those blessed, incredible symbols of her people. Somewhere out there, so very far away, was Joilani home space—maybe even, she thought wildly, while her body labored at its hurtful task, maybe a Joilani empire!

Now he wished to enter her. She was almost inured to the pain; her damaged body had healed in a form pleasing to this Terran. She was only the commander’s fourth “girl.” There had been other commanders, some better, some worse, and “girls” beyond counting, as far back as the Joilani records ran. It had been “girls” like herself and “boys” like Bislat who had first seen the great three-dimensional luminous star swarms in the commander’s private room—and brought back to their people the unbelievable news: somewhere, a Joilani homeland still lived!

Greatly daring, a “girl” had once asked about those Joilani symbols. Her commander had shrugged. “That stuff! It’s the hell and gone the other side of the system, take half your life to get there. I don’t know a thing about ’em. Probably somebody just stuck ’em in. They aren’t Juloos, that’s for sure.”

Yet there the symbols blazed, tiny replicas of the ancient Joilani Sun-in-splendor. It could mean only one thing, that the old myth was true: that they were not natives to this world, but descendants of a colony left by Joilani who traveled space as the Terrans did. And that those great Joilani yet lived!

If only they could reach them. But how, how?

Could they somehow send a message? All but impossible. And even if they did, how could their kind rescue them from the midst of Terran might?

No. Hopeless as it seemed, they must get themselves out and reach Joilani space by their own efforts.

And so the great plan had been born and grown, over years, over lifetimes. Painfully, furtively, bit by bit, Joilani servants and bar attendants and ship cleaners and
amlat
loaders had discovered and brought back the magic numbers, and their meaning: the tau-space coordinates that would take them to those stars. From discarded manuals, from spacers’ talk, they had pieced together the fantastic concept of tau-space itself. Sometimes an almighty Terran would find a naive Joilani question amusing enough to answer. Those allowed inside the ships brought back tiny fragments of the workings of the Terran magic. Joilani, who were humble “boys” by day and “girls” by night, became clandestine students and teachers, fitting together the mysteries of their overlords, reducing them from magic to comprehension. Preparing, planning in minutest detail, sustained only by substanceless hope, they readied for their epic, incredible flight.

And now the lived-for moment had come.

Or had it? Why was it taking so long? Suffering as she had so often smilingly suffered before, Sosalal despaired. Surely nothing would, nothing could change. It was all a dream; all would go on as it always had, the degradation and the pain. . . . The commander indicated new desires; careless with grief, Sosalal complied.