Starship Home (26 page)

Early the next day as the Forester village came to life, and the blacksmith revived the fire of his forge, and the women checked their dyepots, and parties of children went out to collect fruit from the wild trees of what had once been Ryan’s orchard (‘Olerinechard’ as it was called now), Harold and Zachary sat on the front verandah of Our Mother’s hut, nursing Slarnstaffs and waiting for Zoe and Meg to finish talking to Our Mother about the salt problem. The fact that it was the women who were doing the talking, and he was being left outside to bake in the sun had gotten Harold very irritated indeed.

‘If only they’d let me do the explaining,’ he said for the fifth time.

Zachary thought that Zoe and Meg were more than capable of explaining the idea that they needed two hundred pounds of salt in a hurry. It did not seem to Zachary to be a complicated issue. ‘You’re a man, what would you know about shopping for salt?’ he asked Harold, hoping to get a grin out of him.

‘I know more about physics and chemistry than both of them put together,’ Harold answered, without so much as a smile.

Zachary was bored with this. He was quite happy sitting baking in the sun. There were whole summers of his life that Zachary could not remember, having spent them lying on a beach with zinc cream on his nose. ‘So take them to the anti-discrimination tribunal,’ he said and lay back to let the sun have a proper chance at him.

‘Unless we get that salt,’ Harold said, ‘they’re all going to be reduced to hydrogen atoms. And us. Just a lot of hydrogen atoms floating around.’

‘That’s life all right,’ said Zachary. Sometimes Harold despaired of Zachary. ‘Zach, it’s 35 days and counting!’

‘That long, uh?’

Inside the hut, the simple request had been put and was now met with as simple an answer. ‘We can’t give you that much salt,’ Helena said.

Meg thought rapidly. If they could get some from the Foresters, they might be able to make up the remainder from the Trolls. ‘How much can you give us?’ she asked the ancient woman.

‘Two poundweight.’

Zoe gulped. ‘Guinevere says she needs two hundred pounds.’

‘That’s a fortune,’ Helena answered. ‘A Don’s ransom.’

Meg knew the value of salt in a primitive community, but Zoe was surprised. ‘Salt’s very valuable?’ she asked her sister.

‘We preserve our meat with it,’ Helena replied. ‘So salt keeps us alive when the hunting’s bad. Every year we trek to the coast to trade for it. People die doing it. We pay lives for salt. And you want two hundred poundweight?’

‘Who do you trade with?’ asked Zoe. ‘What do you trade?’

‘We trade with the Old Man Narranjerry. He trades salt for steel. Only steel.’

Helena’s answer surprised Meg. She had been envisaging a community on the coastline who gathered salt and used it as a trade item with the inland tribes and clans. But from what Helena was saying, the salt trade seemed to be controlled by a single entrepreneur. ‘This is one man?’ Meg asked.

‘Narranjerry. One old man and his helpers. You want salt? You go to Narranjerry with steel. One poundweight steel buys one poundweight salt.’

‘What’s he do with the steel?’ Meg asked.

‘His little people make the blades. Sword blades, knife blades, and he trades those for books.’

‘“Books”,’ Zoe echoed.

‘And then he trades the books?’ Meg asked.

‘Never,’ Our Mother answered. ‘Narranjerry keeps books for himself. He has a wisdom hoard called a Lie-bree.’

They sat there for a moment in silence, pondering what Helena had told them. Now they knew the nature of the next part of their quest. They must go to the coast, find this old man Narranjerry and trade steel to him for the salt Guinevere needed. But how? ‘They say in their minds how will they find Narranjerry,’ Maze said to Helena, who smiled at her young heir.

Then the ancient woman’s hooded agate eyes turned toward Zoe and Meg. ‘Maze has been on Saltrek. Maze can guide you.’

Meg and Zoe explained to Harold and Zachary what the situation was as the four of them and Maze walked back toward the starship. Zachary had an idea. It always amazed Harold when Zachary had an idea. Harold believed that all the available evidence pointed to Zachary’s being as dumb as a bag of anvils, but kept this belief to himself for obvious reasons. It therefore disconcerted Harold that in practical matters Zachary often seemed to come up with good ideas faster than even Harold could. This phenomenon seemed to throw the bag of anvils hypothesis into doubt. Or maybe, Harold comforted himself by thinking, Zachary was a lucky guesser.

Zachary put his idea like this: ‘Simple,’ he said. ‘We got the bus and that’s both steel and transport as well.’

‘But we don’t have the bus,’ Harold objected.

‘Don’t interrupt me. We got the bus. Lot of steel in it. We drive the bus to the coast, there’s still enough fuel to do that. We cannibalize parts of the bus to trade, right?’

‘What’s he talking about?’ asked Meg.

‘We rip out bits of the bus that aren’t necessary to keep it running. There’s enough excess in there, you could build two buses out of it. We trade the cannibalized bits for salt, and we load the salt on what’s left of the bus, and we drive back. Take three days, four maybe, tops. What do you think Harold?’

Harold was pleased to have his opinion sought, and said he thought it sounded good except for the fact that they had no bus. ‘The last time I saw the bus it was rolling downhill at the Don’s castle.’

The small problem of not having a bus to drive to the coast, cannibalize, and drive back again did not seem to faze Zachary at all. ‘Simple,’ he said, ‘we’ll go to the castle and steal it.’

The Troll man-at-arms on roof watch was looking through his ancient binoculars at five people at the bottom of the hill, grouped around the autobile that the Ironcastle people had arrived in on the night of the Don’s abortive attempt to marry the barefaced foreign woman. The Troll recognized the woman, and Zachary Ironcastle who had fought Ulf and accidentally escaped with his life, and the witch girl Maze from the Forester village. The other two must be the youth and the second barefaced Ironcastle woman. He decided that their behavior was suspicious, and went to the speaking tube.

Zachary’s first worry had been that the bus’s radiator might have been cracked when the bus had finished up its roll downhill by colliding with a tree. This was what he checked first, but he found that the radiator still had water in it, and surely, he reasoned, if it were cracked, the water would have drained away long since. Then he went around the bus checking the tyres, but they seemed sound as well. Things, he decided, could be very much worse.

Maze was following Zachary around, inspecting the mysteries with him. ‘The road’s dangerous one,’ she told him.

‘That’s okay,’ Zachary answered casually, ‘I’m a very good driver.’

‘I don’t think she’s talking about the road surface, Zach,’ Zoe told him. ‘She tells me there’s sand pirates, smugglers, Sullivans, Looters and Plain Doggies,’ she said, ticking off the varied menaces of the road on her fingers. ‘So let’s do it!’ she added gleefully.

Zachary finished his inspection of the tyres, and was about to get up into the driver’s seat, when with a jingle of harness and creak of leather and drum of hooves, the Don arrived with Ulf and Rocky. The Don dismounted, dropped to one knee and kissed Meg’s hand. ‘Where are you thinking of going now?’ the Don asked Zachary. ‘If it means taking the Lady Henderson into any danger, I should think very carefully about my answer.’

Zachary was thinking very carefully about his answer when Zoe answered without thinking at all. ‘We have to get Guinevere some salt, m’ lord,’ she told the Don, ‘so we’re going to the Old Man’s salt farm at the coast.’

‘Bronze, gold, salt,’ the Don said, ‘the Lady Guinevere has expensive tastes!’

‘It seems to me, my lord,’ Ulf rumbled, ‘that Zachary has a great thirst for honor.’

‘Honor? Me?’ Zachary had an instinct that the concept “honor” involved other concepts such as “danger” and “terror”, both of which he felt he could happily live without. ‘Never!’ he said.

‘Then why,’ asked the Don, ‘do you always choose the path of most danger?’

‘Beats the hell out of me your lordship,’ Zachary mumbled. ‘It just sort of … usually turns out that way.’’

Ulf was smiling expectantly at the Don, who was doing a bit of smiling on his own account. ‘The Duchy’s quiet,’ he said, ‘and it’s a long time since I had a holiday.’

‘A good excuse to win much honor, my lord,’ Ulf said approvingly.

‘Why not?’ laughed the Don. ‘We’ll come with you!’

‘With us?’ Meg, despite certain reservations she had about the ideological unsoundness of many of the Don’s attitudes, was experiencing a wave of relief at the thought.

‘You don’t think I’d let you go alone, do you?’ smiled the Don. ‘You’d be eaten at the first bend of the road!’

‘Great,’ sighed Zachary. ‘That’s just great.’

As it turned out, the first bend in the road gave them no trouble whatsoever. Everything started out very smoothly. By the time they had winched the bus up the hill with the help of reverse gear, logs under the front wheels, and a party of Troll men-at-arms with ropes, the sun was already sliding down the western sky and departure had to be delayed until the next day. The bus party of Zachary, Zoe, Harold and Maze set out at first light the next morning, well-provisioned with Troll dried meat and flat bread, and Forester fruit and vegetables, armed with Slarnstaffs, and accompanied by a mounted party consisting of the Don, Meg, Ulf and Rocky. According to all reports the salt road had been quiet of late, and with the Slarnstaffs in the bus, the Don saw no need to detach fighting men from their regular watchtower and border patrol duties. Besides, he said cheerfully, in the event of trouble, a small party had a better chance of getting through. Meg had elected to ride. She had been missing horse riding, which was one of the great pleasures in her life and riding with the Trolls alongside the bus brought color to her cheeks, and an uncomplicated happiness to her face, convincing the Don, if convincing he needed, that here was the woman for him.

In the bus, Zachary drove, and Harold, Zoe and Maze sat up the front. Harold and Zoe were teaching Maze to sing Daisy Daisy (Give Me Your Answer Do) and other such bus songs, and Zachary promised to put off the bus anyone who started singing A Thousand Green Bottles whereupon Zoe had invoked the letter of the law and taught Maze, to that solemn little girl-woman’s delight,
Ten Green Bottles
which for the next hour became top of the charts as far as the passengers were concerned.

What no one knew was that they were being followed by a lone horseman. Marlowe’s Looter friends had been keeping him informed of what was happening at Dark One’s iron castle, or, to be more accurate, what Dark One himself was doing, for they now believed the iron castle and Dark One to be the same entity. The Looters had watched the comings and goings of Dark One’s foods, as they called the starship crew, and had reported to Marlowe that they had returned with a big autobile which Dark One had eaten and then vomited up again the next morning.

The Eldest had been hard put to explain the theological implications of these activities to his followers, but had finally come up with the explanation that Dark One had swallowed the autobile to make it one with himself, and then vomited it out again so that, blessed with his presence, it could carry his foods off to serve him better on whatever mission it was that he had assigned to them.

When Marlowe heard about the autobile arriving back at the starship, he had gone to his home in the dormant Slarn base, changed into drab, earth-colored clothing, and fetched his big bay stallion from where he kept him in a hidden corral in the forest nearby. Thus, when the Don’s party arrived at the starship at first light, and the party set out toward the coast, Marlowe was already in place and followed at a distance. Something strange was going on, and he needed to know what it was. Bronze had been taken into the starship, and the thieves had suggested that the ship needed it for some healing process. The thieves had claimed that starships were not, as he had always believed, immortal and invulnerable. Now they were heading off in the autobile called “school bus” and he had to know what was happening. If indeed the ship needed help before it could lift to the stars again, it might well be that he would have to protect the thieves for a while, perhaps even help them in what they were doing.

For the moment, he followed the tracks that the autobile left. After some hours it became apparent to Marlowe that the party was heading for the coast, not by taking the horse trail, but following the remains of the old road.
Why the coast?
Are they meeting a ship?
he wondered, while knowing that his questions were unlikely to be answered until they came to the coast itself. In the meantime, he simply rode, watching the bus and horse party at a distance, sometimes allowing them to slip out of view, but always keeping an eye on that broad trail the autobile was leaving in the rolling grassland they were now traversing.

Later, Meg could not remember why she was laughing, simply that she was. Away from his castle and the cares of office, the Don had relaxed, and she was finding him a delightful companion, full of insights, wisdom, and a dry humor about human frailties, having had a wide experience of the last in his position as arbiter of the High Law. He had been recounting some trial or other, and had drawn laughter from her, when an arrow passed between them, whickering through the air like an uncomfortably close bullet, and thunked into the bodywork of the bus. Later, she remembered waiting for the bang of the rifle, because she had heard the whickering sound of a close round on a number of occasions when people had shot on her father’s property without permission, and always on those occasions, she had heard the round pass overhead, and then heard the bang of the rifle’s discharge. Here, there was the sound of a projectile, but no bang to follow.

The Don, Ulf and Rocky knew exactly what was happening. Their eyes turned as one to the arrow embedded in the side of the bus, their minds identified it as a Sullivan arrow, and their hands and thighs were turning their horses toward the source of the attack before their conscious minds had even begun to convert the data into words.

In the cover of the nearby woods, was a mounted man, bare-chested, dressed only in a soft leather loincloth and moccasins, his tanned skin geometrically decorated with red ochre and pipeclay designs. The pony he rode was a descendant of the Australian stockhorse, sturdy, powerful, able to turn on a coin. To the pony’s predominant stockhorse blood had been added Arab and Quarterhorse, creating a perfect vehicle and weapons platform for plains horse nomads, for such the Sullivans were.

The first Sullivan Himself had been a cattle station manager in the arid north of South Australia. There came a day when the homestead dish had no longer brought in television pictures, when the radios had gone dead, when the radio telephone had no longer worked, and the original Sullivan Himself had sent a stockman in a four-wheel drive to the nearest town. It had been empty. There had been no one at home. The Slarn had taken them. Slowly, as their position became clear to them, The Sullivan Himself, and his family and his stockmen and his stockmen’s families had begun moving the horses and cattle down into better country. Sometimes they had had to fight, and fight they did. Then the Slarn had come again and put the Forbid on firearms, and the Sullivan Himself, the second of the name, had re-invented the short composite horseman’s bow, the projectile weapon which in other times and places had sometimes dominated warfare. At first the Sullivans had made their bows from the leaf springs of abandoned cars, and then from laminating wood and horn. In a few generations they had taken on the horse nomad lifestyle. They became as savage, and as feared by other tribes as in other times and places other horse nomads had been before them: horse nomads who had been called Mongols, and Huns. In this time, in this place, they were called Sullivans.

‘Sullivans! shouted the Don to Meg. ‘Stay with the autobile!’ He and Ulf and Rocky were now spurring toward the forest’s edge, drawing their swords, as Meg urged her horse up alongside the bus on the driver’s side. In cover at the forest’s edge, the Sullivan nocked another arrow to his bowstring, drew the feathers to his right ear while straightening his left arm to bend the short wood-and-horn composite bow, and released the arrow, sending it on its way toward the autobile. Three of the cursed tribe of Trollmen were riding toward him, but he was concentrating for the moment on the autobile. Time enough for the Trollmen when they were close. He could hear his two companions riding through the forest toward him.

Meg was riding alongside the driver’s window now, shouting, ‘Someone’s attacking us!’

‘Oh come on now,’ Zachary began, but then an arrow thunked into the bodywork of the bus just below the window, and he decided not to dispute the point.

‘Sullivans!’ yelled Maze, who seemed to be very excited by the idea.

‘Just who are Sullivans?’ Zoe asked her.

‘Sort of people,’ Maze answered. ‘Ride horses, never get off, drink horse milk, horse blood, ride forever.’

‘Sort of people?’ Zoe wanted to get this straight.

‘Ride round on horses, burning, killing, stealing…’

‘Sounds like my old neighborhood,’ said Zachary.

‘Ancient Mongols?’ Harold said. ‘Like Mongols? Huns?’

‘Dunno Mongols and Nuns,’ said Maze.

‘Like Looters?’ Zoe suggested.

‘Much worse’n Looters, ‘cause they human and can think,’ Maze said, and pushed Zoe down on the floor as more arrows hit the bus.

Zachary just crouched over the wheel, driving. ‘I hate this kind of stuff,’ he said to himself and anyone else who might be listening, ‘let the record show that Zachary Owens just hates this kind of stuff!’

Meanwhile the first Sullivan had been joined by his two friends, and they were turning their attention from the autobile to the three cursed Trollmen who were charging toward the forest’s edge. They nocked arrows to their bows and drew them, but the cursed Trollmen bent low in their saddles and the arrows passed harmlessly over their cowardly heads. By the time the Sullivans nocked and released their arrows again, the Trollmen were past the first trees of the forest’s edge. As he swept into the shade of the trees, the Don felt the blow, and looked down and saw the Sullivan arrow transfixing his left forearm, but there was no time to think of that, for the Sullivans had drawn their short curved scimitars, and the Don, Rocky and Ulf were fighting for their lives. The forest’s edge became a mosaic of sound: the clash of swords, the tramp and whinny of horses, the smashing of branches, the panting of men. It became a mosaic of smells: smells of crushed grass and eucalypt leaves, and horse sweat, and leather and damp steel, and over all the stink of battle, that abattoir smell of men’s sweating, as they enter the terrible logic of the land of kill-or-be-killed.

Deeper in the forest, another Sullivan was riding to help his three companions, carrying with him the capacity to tip the balance of numbers, to turn the Don’s quest for honor into either rout or death on an unmarked killing ground, when out of ambush rode a bay stallion bearing a rider dressed in dull browns and greens, a terrible warrior whose sword lifted as his big horse shouldered the smaller plains pony to one side. The last thing the Sullivan warrior saw on Earth was the rider’s face, with its metal eye glaring red as the sword swept in and took his head from his shoulders. The severed head rolled into the undergrowth, still staring up as the pony bore the headless corpse off into the forest.

Zachary, still crouched over the wheel of the bus, was trying to concentrate on his driving even though Meg was riding alongside making stupid suggestions. ‘Go back!’ she yelled.

‘Did you say “go back”?’ The woman could not be serious. ‘We can’t let them die for us!’ Meg yelled.

‘Why not?’ Zachary answered. For the moment, he could not quite follow her logic.

Now Zoe was yelling at him. ‘She’s right! We’ve got the Slarnstaffs. We can help.’

‘We could lose the steel we need to buy the salt to heal Guinevere to get her off the planet and save maybe thousands of lives!’ yelled Harold, buying into the argument.

That did it for Zachary. Harold’s argument was so right in logic and so wrong in every other thing that he felt and believed. Zachary slowed the bus and began to turn it. In a last-ditch effort to save face, he said to Harold: ‘Don’t argue with ‘em, kid, they’re women,’ and then, as he headed the bus back along its own tracks, he said to the world at large, ‘why me? What did I ever do? Why me?’ but just as the bus turned, the Trolls came riding out of the forest, laughing and wiping their sword blades. They appeared to be doing a replay of the action they had just been in, because they were all gesturing and talking at once.

As they came closer, Meg rode out from the bus to meet them, and saw with horror that the Don had a arrow through his forearm. ‘You’re wounded!’ The Don was pleased by the Lady Henderson’s evident concern, but certainly was not going to show his pleasure in front of Ulf and Rocky. ‘Just a flesh wound,’ he said, as he collapsed in the saddle. Meg grabbed him from one side and Ulf from the other, and this was how they rode down to the bus which by this time was turning again, and pulling up.

It was then that Meg saw that the Don’s arm was not the only thing which had been damaged by a Sullivan arrow. There, embedded in the bodywork of the bus was another arrow, and below this arrow, diesel fuel was leaking out onto the grass. The bus’s fuel tank had been punctured. ‘Zachary!’ Meg yelled. ‘Zachary! We’re losing fuel!’ Zachary pulled on the hand brake, and came out the bus doorway at a run. When he got to where Meg was dismounting, he stopped and stared at their irreplaceable fuel as it spilled out and soaked into the summer-dry ground.