Jack Vance - Gaean Reach 01 (21 page)

Jemasze dropped the Ellux to the ground directly before the largest of the stone structures. He opened the door, extended the descensor and alighted, followed by Sammatzen and more cautiously by the other members of the Mull.

Jemasze signaled to the Wind-runners; they approached without enthusiasm. Jemasze asked: “Where is the director of the agency?”

The Wind-runners looked bewildered. “Director?”

“The individual in authority.”

The Wind-runners muttered together, then one asked: “Might you be referring to the Old Erjin? If so, there he stands.”

Out of the interior of the stone building, like a fish rising from dark water, came an exceedingly large erjin; a creature bald, with neither ruff nor facial tufts, its skin a curious snake-belly white. Never had Gerd Jemasze seen an erjin of such proportions or such presence. It glanced aside; one of the Wind-runners stiffened as if by electric shock, then moved forward to stand beside the erjin, where he served as translator, converting telepathic messages into words. The erjin asked: “What do you want here?”

Sammatzen said: “We are the Mull, the primary administrative organ of Koryphon.”

“Of Szintarre,” said Jemasze.

Sammatzen continued. “The enslavement of intelligent beings is an illegal act, on Szintarre and throughout the Gaean Reach. We find that erjins are being enslaved as mounts for the Uldra tribes and as servants and workers on Szintarre.”

“They are not slaves,” the Old Erjin stated, through the agency of the Wind-runner.

“They are slaves by our definition, and we are here to stop the practice. No more erjins may be sold either to Uldras or to the Gaeans of Szintarre, and those already enslaved will be freed.”

“They are not slaves,” stated the Old Erjin.

“If they are not slaves—what are they?”

The Old Erjin transmitted his message. “I knew you were coming. You and your fleet of sky-ships were watched as you entered the valley of the monument; you have been expected.”

Sammatzen said dryly: “For a fact there seems little activity around here.”

“The activity is elsewhere. We sold no slaves; we sent forth warriors. The signal has been broadcast. This world is ours and we are now resuming control.”

The men listened gape-mouthed.

The Old Erjin controlled the voice of the Wind-runner: “The signal has gone forth. At this instant, erjins destroy the Uldras who thought to master them. Those erjins whom you considered servants now dominate the city Olanje and all Szintarre.”

Sammatzen stared toward Joris and Jemasze, his face contorted in disbelief and anguish. “Is the creature telling the truth?”

“I don’t know,” said Jemasze. “Call Olanje by radio and find out.”

Sammatzen ran heavy-footed to the saloon. Jemasze watched the Old Erjin reflectively a moment or two, then asked: “Are you planning violence upon us, here and now?”

“Not unless you initiate such violence, inasmuch as you have a clear preponderance of force. So leave here as you came.”

Jemasze and Joris retreated to the Ellux saloon, to find Sammatzen turning away from the radio. His face was pale; sweat beaded his forehead. “Erjins are running rampant in Olanje; the city is a madhouse!”

Jemasze went to the controls. “We’re leaving, and fast, before the Old Erjin changes its mind.”

“Can’t we persuade it to call off its warriors?” cried Adelys Lam. “They’re killing, destroying, burning! Nothing but bloodshed! Let me out! I will entreat the Old Erjin to peace!”

Jemasze thrust her back. “We can’t entreat it to anything. If it were rational it wouldn’t have launched the attack to begin with. Let’s leave here before the rest of us are dead.”

T
he erjin uprising achieved its most striking successes in Olanje, where fewer than a thousand erjins cowed and dominated the entire city. The residents hysterically submitted to slaughter, or fled pell-mell. Some hid in the jungles; some retreated to their villas in the Carnelian Mountains; a few boarded their yachts or the yachts of their friends; others flew aircraft to the Persimmon Islands or Uaia. Only the most negligible resistance was offered, and later, when historians and sociologists studied the episode, and the question was put: “Why did you not fight in defense of your homes?” the responses were generally similar: “We were not organized; we had no leadership; we did not know what to do.” “I am not accustomed to the use of weapons; I have always been a peaceful person and I never thought that I might be required to defend myself.”

The land-barons of the Uaian domains assembled an expeditionary force of three thousand men, including contingents from the Uldra tribes of the Treaty Lands. In two weeks of cautious probing, fusillades from the air and assaults in improvised armored cars, the erjins were blasted out of the once beautiful city and sent fleeing in bedraggled bands across the countryside. For another two weeks sky-ships and mobile patrols pursued and destroyed the fugitives
*
; then without formality the expeditionary force returned to Uaia, and the folk of Szintarre ruefully addressed themselves to the task of reconstruction.

The Uldras of the Retent, no less than the Outkers of Szintarre, suffered from the insurrection. Immediately upon receipt of the telepathic notice, the erstwhile mounts, ignoring pinch-snaffles and electric curbs, reared over backwards to throw their riders, then proceeded to rend them into fragments. Those in pens broke or climbed fences, disconnected electric circuitry and attacked members of the tribe. After recovering from the initial shock the Uldras fought back with a vindictiveness equal to that of the erjins and successfully defended themselves. Primitive and remote tribes such as Cuttacks and the Nose-talkers suffered the most severely, while the Garganche, the Blue Knights, the Hunge and the Noal took relatively few casualties.

Two weeks later the Gray Prince called a grand karoo of the Garganche, Hunge, the Long-lips, and several other tribes; in passionate terms he labeled the erjin insurrection a plot of the Treaty Land Outkers, and he performed the chilling howl of hate by which an Uldra warrior swore vengeance upon his enemies. Intoxicated with rage and xheng
*
, the tribesmen echoed his howl, and on the following day an Uldra horde marched off to the east, intending to purge the Alouan of Outkers.

Kurgech brought news of the imminent invasion to Kelse, who at once notified the Uaian Order War Council. For a second time the sky-army was mobilized and dispatched to the Manganese Cliffs, a great scarp of glossy black schist overlooking the Plain of Walking Bones, where a party of a hundred Aos mounted on criptids were conducting a cautious holding operation against the xheng-crazed warriors of the Retent. As the flotilla approached, sky-sharks plunged out of the clouds; but today they were anticipated and demolished by radar-aimed guns. The Retent Uldras, despite their fanaticism, scattered and retreated across the Plain of Walking Bones, and ultimately took cover in a forest of black jinkos on the slopes of the Gildred Mountains.

Kelse was on hand in the Morningswake utility vehicle which had been converted into a gunship, with a crew of twelve—seven of his cousins and four Ao ranch-hands. During the first few minutes of the encounter a Garganche pellet exploded against an interior bulkhead, breaking and lacerating the shoulder of Ernshalt Madduc. There was no longer any semblance of a battle; Kelse communicated with the flotilla commander and received permission to return to Morningswake with the wounded man.

As Kelse flew north, his attention was attracted by a plume of smoke on the horizon which aroused him to instant alarm. He radioed Morningswake Manor but made no contact, and his foreboding was intensified. He strained the sky-car to its utmost speed, and presently Morningswake appeared ahead.

Smoke arose from a field of dry grain across Wild Crake Pond; also ablaze was the little clapboard schoolhouse where those Ao children who so desired were educated. Morningswake Manor appeared undamaged; but looking through binoculars Kelse saw a sky-blue Hermes Cloudswift on the lawn before the house.

Kelse dropped the sky-car to the lawn. Eleven men jumped to the ground and with weapons ready ran to the house. In the Great Hall they found five Uldra nobles drinking the finest wines Morningswake cellars afforded. Jorjol sat in the place of the land-baron, his feet on the table. The appearance of Kelse took him by surprise; he gasped in wonder. Kelse loped across the room and struck him sprawling to the floor. The four other Uldras vented oaths and jumped to their feet to stand petrified at the sight of the drawn weapons.

“Where is Schaine?” demanded Kelse.

Jorjol picked himself up from the floor and mustered what dignity he was able. He jerked his thumb toward the study. His voice was blurred by wine. “She chose to lock herself away. She would have come forth when we fired the manor.” He lurched a step closer to Kelse and stood looking down his long drooping nose. “How I hate you,” he said softly. “If hate were stone I could build a tower into the clouds. I have always hated you. The joy I felt when the erjin tore you apart was like rain on the hot desert and caused me as much pleasure as the attention I gave your sister. My life has not been good, except for those two moments and now I will add a third, for I mean to kill you. If I do nothing else, I will take the life from your wicked Outker body.”

A long blade appeared in his hand, thrust forward from his sleeve by a spring. He lunged; Kelse jerked away from the stroke and caught Jorjol’s wrist with his right hand; with his steel left hand he caught Jorjol’s throat; with his steel arm he lifted him into the air and staggering to the door threw him out into the yard. He moved forward, and as Jorjol rose to his feet, seized him again and shook him like a rag. Jorjol’s eyes bulged; his tongue lolled from his mouth. In Kelse’s ears came a screaming: the voice of Schaine. “Kelse, Kelse, please don’t! Don’t, Kelse! We are land-barons; he is an Uldra!”

Kelse relaxed his grip; Jorjol sagged gasping to the ground.

Jorjol and his henchmen were locked in a cattle-shed and a pair of guards placed over them. During the night they dug under the back wall, garrotted the guards and escaped.

T
he world Koryphon was at peace: a surly, roiling peace of unresolved hatreds and unpleasant insights. In Olanje the physical damage done by the erjins had been repaired; the city seemed as gay and insouciant as ever. Valtrina Darabesq opened Villa Mirasol to three parties in rapid succession to demonstrate that the erjin uprising had left her undaunted. Across the Persimmon Sea the tribes of the Retent sullenly sat in their camps nursing grievances and planning murders, raids and tortures for the future, though without any great zest. On the Palga the Wind-runners eyed the empty slave pens and wondered how they would buy wheels, bearings and hardware for their sail-wagons. Meanwhile, under the Volwode peaks in the gorge of the river Mellorus, groups of marveling scholars had already begun to examine the rose-quartz and gold fane. The Old Erjin and his associates had departed into regions even more remote than the Volwodes. Jorjol the Gray Prince, however, had not been rendered apathetic by his reverses. The fervor of his emotions had no upper limit; rather than waning with time they had condensed and thickened and become more pungent.

About a month after the expulsion of the erjins from Olanje the Mull sat in formal session at Holrude House. Tuning in the broadcast of the proceedings, Kelse Madduc heard a familiar voice and saw the splendid figure of Jorjol the Gray Prince standing at that rostrum provided for petitioners, claimants and witnesses. Kelse summoned Schaine and Gerd Jemasze: “Listen to this.”

“—this opinion I hold to be defeatist, vague and unprincipled,” Jorjol was saying. “Certain conditions have changed, as agreed—but not those conditions under discussion, by no whit! Do ethical principles fluctuate overnight? Does good become bad? Does a wise decision become a trifle merely because a set of unrelated events have occurred? Certainly not!

“In its wisdom the Mull issued a manifesto terminating the control of the land-barons over domains illegally seized and maintained. The land-barons have defied the lawful commands of the Mull. I speak with the voice of public opinion when I call for enforcement of the Mull’s edict. What then is your response?”

Erris Sammatzen, the current chairman, said: “Your remarks, on their face, are reasonable. The Mull indeed issued an edict which the land-barons have ignored, and intervening circumstances are not germane to the affair.”

“In that case,” stated Jorjol, “the Mull must compel obedience!”

“There,” said Sammatzen, “is the difficulty, and it illustrates the fallacy of issuing large commands which we can’t enforce.”

“Let us examine the matter as reasonable men,” said Jorjol. “The edict is just; we are agreed as to this. Very well! If you cannot enforce this edict, then obviously an organ of enforcement is needed; otherwise, your role in the world becomes no more than advisory.”

Sammatzen gave a dubious shrug. “What you say may be true; still, I don’t feel that we are ready to make such large readjustments.”

“The process is not all that difficult,” said Jorjol. “In fact I will now volunteer to organize this compulsive force! I will work diligently to strengthen the Mull! Give me authority; give me funds. I will recruit able men; I will procure powerful weapons; I will ensure that the law of the Mull is no longer ignored.”

Sammatzen frowned and leaned back in his chair. “This is obviously a very large decision, and at first glance it seems over-responsive.”

“Perhaps because you are reconciled to a Mull weak and toothless.”

“No, not necessarily. But—” Sammatzen hesitated.

“Do you or do you not intend to enforce your edicts upon all the folk of Koryphon, high and low, without fear or favoritism?” asked Jorjol.

Sammatzen spoke in an easy voice: “We certainly intend justice and equity. Before we decide how to achieve these fugitive ideals, we must decide what kind of an agency we are, how powerful a mandate our people have given us, and whether we really want to expand our responsibilities.”