Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (242 page)

Moreover, he doubted that he could really aid the poor devil.

Yeshua must be half-cracked. Certainly he was half-baked. And that was a peculiar thing about this world and the resurrection. Everybody else had not only been awakened from the dead with the body of a 25-year-old—except, of course, for those who had died on Earth before that age—but all who had suffered a mental illness on Earth had been restored mentally whole.

However, as time passed, and the problems of the new world pressed in, many began to sicken again in their minds. There wasn’t much schizophrenia; but he understood from talking to a twentieth-centurian that at least three-quarters of schizophrenia had been proved to be due to a physical imbalance and was primarily genetic in origin.

Nevertheless, five years of life in the rivervalley had produced a number of insane or half-insane people, though not in the relative proportions known on Earth. And the resurrection had not been successful in converting the majority of the so-called sane to a new outlook.

As before, most of humanity acted irrational and was impervious to logic. Mix was not affected. He had always known the world was half-mad and behaved accordingly, usually to his benefit.

But Yeshua, miserable fellow that he was, could not forgive himself for whatever it was he had been or done on Earth.

VII

That evening, immediately after the copias were filled the fleet of Albion set sail. It consisted of five men-of-war, twenty frigates, and forty cruisers. The so-called men-of-war were huge single-hulled ships, two-masted, fore-and-aft rigged, the bamboo reinforced with pine and oak. The crew of each was fifty men. The other classes were smaller, swifter catamarans.

The fleet had no sooner rounded the bend that took them alongside the state of Anglia than the shores on both sides of the river boomed with the roar of big drums. The Anglians, perhaps fearing an invasion, were summoning their own forces. The second set of drums were those of Kramer’s spies, hidden up in the mountains, and signalling in relay to their home base. Across the river, the Huns, aroused because of fears that the two-year-old treaty was to be broken, burst into a frenzy of drumming. Stafford directed his fleet to sail in close to the Anglian shore, run along it for a mile and then cut to the Hunnish side. By the time the Anglians had boarded their vessels and were ready to fight, the Albion fleet was close to the opposing Hunnish bank and a mile ahead. Now the Huns put out their boats.

All that night, tacking back and forth, the Albion ships sailed with an increasing number of pursuers. There came the time when ships ahead of them put out to intercept them. Then, the fleet cut back and forth in the middle of the river and managed to keep from close quarters because of a desire by both the Huns and the English Anglians and New Cornwallians to avoid conflict with each other. Neither wanted to pursue the Albions into the others’ waters.

Besides, by now, it was becoming apparent that the Albions did not intend to land on either bank. Kramer’s capital city, Fides, must be his goal. Stafford and Mix were betting that Kramer, on hearing of the approaching fleet, would advance his own campaign plan ahead of time. He would order his huge fleet, larger than the combined ships of Albion, Anglia, and New Cornwall, to set out at once. Stafford had timed his sailing very carefully, and events worked as if he had been clocking them. The clouds, which always appeared at two o’clock after midnight covered the skies and blackened the land and the river. The rains torrented to reduce visibility to almost zero.

But, just before the clouds began to form, Stafford saw the starlight on the sails of Kramer’s fleet. By then, the Anglian ships had dropped back to protect their own coasts, and the New Cornwallians were beginning to turn. The Huns, however, were still following. Some of them had closed in with each other, for there was great hostility between differing tribes, and these could not resist the chance to attack.

Just before the starlight was cut off by the clouds, Stafford commanded his flagship to sail toward the Hunnish coast. The Fidean fleet immediately changed its course to go toward the same point. Stafford maintained the line of direction for half a mile, then had his signalman, using a hooded fish-oil lamp, transmit the code ordering the fleet to head for the western bank.

The plan worked to the extent that the two fleets sailed on by each other without any contact. Whether or not Kramer’s ships then encountered the Hunnish ships was something that could not be determined. An hour after daybreak, the Albion vessels beached at the capital of Fides. The city was well fortified with earthen ramparts and great bamboo logs and stones hauled down from the mountain. Nor had Kramer stripped Fides of fighting men to crew his fleet.

* * * *

Stafford did not attack the city at once. He sent ships to land their personnel further along the bank. These overcame the relatively small garrisons guarding the slave stockades. The freed men were given weapons and set to liberating other stockades. At noon the onslaught against the capital began.

Two small catapults threw large stones to batter down two widely separated spots. The forces that sallied out to destroy the catapults were themselves destroyed. Fires were built against the two salient spots, and more stones were cast. Finally, men protected from fire in armor of riverserpent hide and drenched with water drove battering rams against the wall. The walls crumbled, the ram-men stepped aside and the Albions poured in.

A half hour later, the capital was taken and all defenders killed.

Mix, blackened with smoke and bleeding slightly from two wounds in an arm and leg, climbed a tree on top of a hill. The fleet of Kramer was not in sight. So far, so good.

However, Kramer could not be found. Either he had escaped or else, as seemed unlikely but was possible, he had sailed with his ships. Stafford became alarmed. If the Fidean fleet had missed contact with the Hunnish fleet or had bulled its way through, Kramer could be doing the same thing in Albion that he, Stafford, had done here. Although his men were tired from the voyage and the fighting, he ordered them aboard. Sail was set immediately. At least, the trip down would be faster than that up.

Shortly after the rainfall of the next night, they came to the banks of Albion. All was quiet—but it was not normal.

No lanterns signaled back. Stafford had no time to hesitate. The Fidean fleet appeared from its hiding place on the opposite bank.

Outnumbering the Albion ships two to one, they drove them towards the home bank. Stafford’s men fought more than well, and many a ship drifted down the river without a steersman at the helm and none but dead or seriously wounded on the decks.

Nevertheless, the survivors of Albion had no choice but to make a stand on the plains. They beached their vessels and grouped to attack the sailors of Kramer as they debarked. Then the trap closed. Land troops, hiding in the trees among the hills, rushed across the plain. The Albions resisted until they died or were too wounded to continue battling.

Stafford was one of the last to go down, but a spear through his eye and into his brain took his life.

Mix was not so lucky. A club knocked his leather helmet off, and another club tore him loose from his wits. When he awoke, he had a large lump on the side of his head, a throbbing sickening ache in his brain and stomach and a thong around his wrists, tied behind his back.

He was lying on the grass floor of a bamboo stockade with a number of other prisoners. The morning sun was a few degrees above the mountains.

Near him sat Yeshua. His knees were drawn up to his chest, and he stared downward, his cheeks proped against the inside of his knees. Dried blood caked his right ribs and the hair on the left side of his head.

Groaning and wincing, Mix raised himself to a sitting position. The effort dizzied him, and his eyes had a tendency to cross. But, during the intervals he could see straight, he counted thirty prisoners, twenty-one men and nine women.

“Where’s Bithniah?” he said to Yeshua.

Yeshua did not look up. He said, hollowly, “She was being raped by many men the last I saw her. She should be dead by now. At least I haven’t heard her screaming. The other women have stopped screaming. They must be dead, too.”

Mix gestured at the female prisoners. “How’d they escape it?”

“Kramer saved them. He said he wanted some alive…to burn.”

Mix grunted and said, “I was afraid that was the reason they didn’t kill me.”

He looked along the tops of the walls. The guards were many and alert. They would be down and on him at once if he tried to ram his head on the wall. Still, he might be able to do it once. He felt as if he had suffered a concussion of the brain. One more hard blow might remove him from the fire and restore him whole somewhere else, far away on the riverbank.

He said, “If we started a ruckus, they might have to kill some of us to quiet us down. We’d be lucky if we could die now.”

Yeshua raised his head. His eyes were wild and staring as when Mix had last seen him. They were also red and puffy, as if he had wept much.

“If only a man did not have to live again! If he could be dust forever, his thoughts and agonies dissolved into the soil, eaten by the worms as his flesh is eaten! But no, there’s no escape. He must live again. And again. God will not permit him release.”

Mix did not reply. He was thinking that if he could muster enough strength, he could run at full speed across the 30 yards of the stockade floor.

When he drove his skull into the bamboo wall on the other side, he might crack his head open.

Now was the time.

“So long, Yeshua, you poor devil,”
he said. “Maybe you will be happy again some day.”

He rose to his feet. A guard shouted at him to sit down. The stockade whirled, his knees buckled. When he regained consciousness, he was even more sick.

Yeshua said, “There was a time when I might have rid you of your pain, driven the demons from your body. But no more. You have to have faith—and now I do not have it.”

VIII

The gates swung open. Spearmen entered first and took positions around Yeshua. Kramer followed.

He was a short fat youth with dark-brown hair and pale blue eyes. His face was piggish. He wore a black kilt and a long black towel as a cloak.

With Kramer were two prisoners. Both were short dark men with Levantine faces. Both were bloody and bruised. Mix, who had managed to sit up again, recognized one of the prisoners. He was Mattithayah, the little man who had mistaken Mix for Yeshua.

Kramer pointed at Yeshua. He spoke English with a heavy German accent. “Is that the man?”

Mattithayah broke into a storm of unintelligible words. Kramer sent him staggering with a blow of his fist against the jaw. He spoke to the other prisoner. This one answered in English as heavily accented as Kramer’s, but his native tongue was obviously different.

“Yeshua!” he cried. “Rabbi! Master! We have looked for you for many years. And now you are here, too!”

He began to weep and tried to walk to Yeshua, but spears forced him back.

Yeshua had looked once at the two prisoners, groaned, and let his head sink back to its resting place on his knees.

Kramer, scowling, muttering strode up to Yeshua and seized his long hair. Jerking it upward, he forced Yeshua to look at him.

“Madman! Anti-Christ!” he shouted. “You’ll pay for your blasphemies! Just as your two crazed friends will pay!”

Yeshua closed his eyes. His lips moved soundlessly. Kramer struck him in the mouth with the back of his hand, and blood flowed from the right corner of Yeshua’s lips.

Kramer screamed at him. “Speak, you filth! Do you claim to be Christ?”

Yeshua opened his eyes. He spoke in a low voice. “I claim to be only a man named Yeshua. If this Christ of yours did exist and He were here, He would be horrified, driven to madness with despair, at what has happened to His teachings.”

Kramer hit Yeshua so hard that he fell upon his back. Kramer drove the toe of his hard leather sandal against Yeshua’s ribs.

“Renounce your blasphemies! Recant your Satanic ravings! You will escape much pain in this world if you do, and you may save your soul in the next!”

Yeshua said, “Do what you will to me, you unclean Gentile!”

Kramer shouted, “Shut your dirty mouth, you insane monster!”

Yeshua grunted as Kramer’s sandal drove into his ribs again, and he moaned for a while thereafter.

Kramer strode to the two prisoners. “Do you still maintain that this lunatic is the Blessed Son of God?”

The two prisoners were pale beneath their dark skins and their faces looked as if fashioned from wax. Neither replied to Kramer.

“Answer me, you swine!” he cried. He tore a spear from a soldier’s hands and began to beat them with the butt. They tried to run but were held by soldiers.

Yeshua, who had struggled to his feet, said, “He is so savage because he fears that they may speak the truth.”

Mix said, “What is the truth?” He was getting sicker and beginning to lose his interest in the situation. God, if only he could die before he was tied to the stake and the pile set aflame!

“I’ve heard that question before,” Yeshua said.

* * * *

When Kramer had beaten the two prisoners into unconsciousness, they were dragged out through the gates by their legs, their heads bobbing on the grass and their arms trailing behind. Kramer started to walk toward Yeshua, but he stopped as a man ran through the gates and shouted at him.