The Asutra (12 page)

All swung about. Hozman Sore-throat stood in the door-hole. He came forward, a pale, stern-faced man of ordinary stature. A black cloak concealed his garments, except for the maroon scarf which muffled his neck.

The Alula said, "Last night on the river Vurush you took four of our people. We want them restored to us. The Alula are not for the slave pens; this we will make clear
to
every slave-taker of Caraz."

Hozman Sore-throat laughed, putting aside the threat with the ease of long practice. "Are you not over hasty? You accost me without basis."

Karazan took a slow step forward. "Hozman, your time is upon you."

The landlord bustled close. "Not in the inn! This is the first law of Shagfe! "

The Alula thrust him aside with a sweep of his massive arm. "Where are our people?"

"Come now," said Hozman briskly. "I can't be blamed for every disappearance in the Mirkil district. At Vurush River under the Orgais? Last night? A far distance for a man who breakfasted at Shagfe."

"A not impossible distance."

Hozman smilingly shook his head. "If I owned pacers that staunch and swift, would I deal in slaves? I would breed pacers and make my fortune. As for your people, the Orgai is chumpa country; here may be the tragic truth."

Karazan, pale with rage and frustration, stood speechless, unable to find a crevice in Hozman's defense. Hozman glimpsed the black creature in the shadow of the doorway. He jerked forward, intent and startled. "What does the Ka do here? Is it now your ally?"

Ifness said evenly, "I captured it under Thrie Orgai, near where you met us yesterday afternoon."

Hozman turned away from the creature he had called a "Ka "; nevertheless his eyes strayed back toward where it stood. He spoke in easy, jocular tones, "Another voice, another accusation! If words were blades, poor Hozman would writhe on the ground in a hundred pieces."

"As he will, in any event," said Karazan menacingly, "unless he returns the four Alula girls he stole."

Hozman calculated, looking back and forth between Ifness and the Ka. He turned to Karazan. "Certain of the chumpas are my agents," he said in a voice like cream. "Perhaps they hold your Alula girls. If such is the case, will you trade four for two?"

"How do you mean, 'four for two'? " growled Karazan.

"For your four, I'll take this white-haired man and the Ka. " "I veto the proposal," said Ifness promptly. "You must put forward a better offer."

"Well, the Ka alone then. Think! A savage alien for four handsome girls."

"A remarkable offer! " declared Ifness. "Why do you want the creature?"

"I can always find customers for such a curiosity. " Hozman moved politely aside to allow newcomers into the common room: two Kash Blue-worms, drunk and ugly, the hair matted on their foreheads. The foremost jostled Hozman. "Stand back, reptile. You have brought us all to poverty and degradation; must you now block my path as well?"

Hozman moved away, his lips curling in a smile of contempt. The Kash Blue-worm stopped short and thrust forward his face. "Do you dare to mock me? Am I ludicrous?"

Baba sprang forward. "No combat in here, never in the common room! "

The Kash swung his arm in a backhanded blow, knocking Hozman to the floor, at which Baba brought forth a cudgel and with amazing dexterity drove the Kash cursing and lumbering from the inn. Ifness solicitously reached to help Hozman to his feet. He glanced at Etzwane. "Your knife, to cut off a growth."

Etzwane jumped forward. Ifness held aside Hozman's maroon scarf; Etzwane slashed the straps of the little harness, while Hozman lay thrashing and kicking. The innkeeper gaped in amazement, unable to wield his cudgel. With his nose wrinkled in distaste Ifness lifted the asutra, a flattened creature marked with faint brown and maroon stripes. Etzwane slashed the nerve and Hozman emitted the most appalling scream yet heard in the inn at Shagfe. A hard, strong shape struck between Ifness and Etzwane: the Ka. Etzwane raised his knife, ready to stab, but the Ka was already gone with the asutra and out into the yard. Ifness ran in pursuit, with Etzwane close behind. They came upon a macabre scene, indistinct in swirls of boiling dust. The Ka, talons protruding from its feet, stamped upon the asutra and tore it to shreds.

Ifness, putting away his energy gun, stood grimly watching. Etzwane said in astonishment, "It hates the asutra more than we do."

"A curious exhibition," Ifness agreed.

From within the inn came a new outcry and the thud of blows. Clutching his head, Hozman ran frantically out into the yard, with the Alula in pursuit. Ifness, moving with unusual haste, intervened and waved off the Alula. "Are you totally without foresight? If you kill this man we will learn nothing."

"What is there to learn? " roared Karazan. "He has sold our daughters into slavery; he says we will never see them again."

"Why not learn the details?" Ifness turned to where Etzwane prevented Hozman from flight. "You have much to tell us."

"What can I tell you?" said Hozman. "Why should I trouble myself? They will tear me apart like the cannibals they are."

"I am nevertheless curious. You may tell your story."

"It is a dream," mumbled Hozman. "I rode through the air like a gray ghost, I spoke with monsters; I am a creature alive and dead."

"First of all," said Ifness, "where are the people you stole last night?"

Hozman threw his arm up in an unrestrained gesture which suggested imprecision in his thinking processes. "Beyond the sky! They are gone forever. No one returns after the car drops down;"

"Ah, I see. They have been taken into an aircraft."

"Better to say that they are gone from the world Durdane."

"And when does the car drop down?"

Hozman looked furtively aside, with his mouth pinched into a crafty knot. Ifness spoke sharply, "No temporizing! The Alula are waiting to torture you and we must not inconvenience them."

Hozman gave a hoarse laugh. "What do I care for torture? I know I must die by pain; so I was told by my witch-uncle. Kill me any way you like; I have no preference."

"How long have you carried the asutra?"

'It has been so long I have forgotten my old life. . .. When? Ten years ago, twenty years. They looked into my tent, two men in black garments; they were no men of Caraz, nor men of Durdane. I rose to meet them in fear, and they put the mentor upon me. " Hozman felt his neck with trembling fingers. He looked sidelong toward the Alula, who stood attentive, hands at the hilts of their scimitars.

"Where are the four you stole from us? " asked Karazan.

"They are gone to a far world. You are curious as to what is to be their lot? I cannot say. The mentor told me nothing."

Ifness made a sign to Karazan and spoke in an easy voice, "The mentor was able to communicate with you?"

Hozman's eyes became unfocused, words began to gush from his mouth. "It is a condition impossible to describe. When I first discovered the creature I went crazy with revulsion—but only for a moment! It performed what I call a pleasure-trick, and I became flooded with joy. The dreary Balch swamp seemed to swim with delightful odors, and I was a man transformed. There was at that moment nothing which I could not have accomplished! " Hozman threw his arms to the sky. "The mood lasted several minutes, and then the men in black returned and made me aware of my duties. I obeyed, for I quickly learned the penalty of disobedience; the mentor could bless with joy or punish with pain. It knew the language of men but could not speak except in a hiss and a whistle, which I never learned. But I could talk aloud and ask if such a course fulfilled its wishes. The mentor became my soul, closer to me than hands and feet, for its nerves led to my nerves. It was alert to my welfare and never forced me to work in rain or cold. And I never hungered, for my work was rewarded with ingots of good gold and copper and sometimes steel."

"And what were your duties? " asked Ifness.

Hozman's flow of words was again stimulated, as if they had long been pent inside of him, building a pressure to be released. "They were simple. I bought prime slaves, as many as could be had. I worked as a slave-taker, and I have scoured the face of Caraz, from the Azur River in the east to the vast Dulgov in the west, and as far south as Mount Thruska. Thousands of slaves have I sent into space! "

"How did you so send them?"

"At night, when no one was near and the mentor could warn me of danger, I called down the little car and loaded aboard my slaves, which first I had drugged into a happy stupor: sometimes only one or two, again as many as a dozen or even more. If I chose, the car would take me where I wished to go, quickly through the night, as from the Orgai to Shagfe village."

"And where did the car take the slaves?"

Hozman pointed into the sky. "Above hangs a depot hull, where the slaves lie quiet. When the hull is full it flies away to the mentor's world, which lies somewhere in the coils of Histhorbo the Snake. So much I learned to my idle amusement one starry night when I asked my mentor many questions, which it answered by a yes or a no. Why did it need so many slaves? Because its previous creatures were inadequate and insubordinate, and because it feared a terrible enemy, somewhere off among the stars. " Hozman fell silent. The Alula had drawn close to surround him; they now regarded him less with hate than with awe for the weird travail he had undergone.

Ifness asked in his most casual voice, "And how do you call down the little car?"

Hozman licked his lips and looked off over the plain. Ifness said gently, "Never again will you carry the asutra which brought such bliss to your brain. You are now one with the rest of us, and we consider the asutra our enemies."

Hozman said sullenly, 'In my pouch I carry a box with a little button within. When I require the car, I go out into the dark night and push on the button and hold it so until the car comes down."

"Who drives the car?"

"The device works by a mysterious will of its own."

"Give me the box with the button."

Hozman slowly drew forth the box, which Ifness took into his own possession. Etzwane, at a glance and a nod from Ifness, searched Hozman's pouch and person, but found only three small ingots of copper and a magnificent steel dagger with a handle of carved white glass.

Hozman watched with a quizzical expression. "Now what will you do with me?"

Ifness looked toward Karazan, who shook his head. "This is not a man upon whom we can take vengeance. He is a puppet, a toy on a string."

"You have made a just decision," said Ifness. "In this slave-taking land his offense is simple overzealousness."

"Still, what next? " demanded Karazan. "We have not reclaimed our daughters. This man must call down the car, which we will seize and hold against their release."

"There is no one aboard the car with whom you can bargain," said Hozman. Suddenly he added, "You might go aloft in the car and expostulate in person."

Karazan uttered a soft sound and looked up into the purple sky of the evening: a colossus in white blouse and black breeches. Etzwane also looked up and thought of Rune the Willow Wand among the crawling asutra....

Ifness asked Hozman, "Have you ever gone aloft to the depot ship?"

"Not I," said Hozman. "I had great fear of such an event. On occasion a gray dwarf creature and its mentor came down to the planet. Often have I stood hours through the night while the two mentors hissed one to the other. Then I knew that the depot had reached capacity and that no more slaves were needed for a period. " "When last did the mentor come down from the depot?"

"A time ago; I cannot recall exactly. I have been allowed small time for reflection."

Ifness became pensive. Karazan thrust his bulk forward. "This shall be our course of action: we shall call down the car and ourselves go aloft, to destroy our enemies and liberate our people. We need only wait until night."

"The tactic leaps to mind," said Ifness. "If successful it might yield valuable benefits—not the least being the ship itself. But difficulties present themselves, notably the return descent. You might find yourself in command of the depot ship, but nonetheless marooned. Such a venture is precarious. I advise against it."

Karazan made a disconsolate sound and again searched the sky, as if to discover a feasible route to the depot ship. Hozman, seeing an opportunity to slip away unobserved, did so. He walked around the inn to his pacer, to find a Blue-worm rifling the saddlebags. Hozman gave an inarticulate babble of fury and leapt upon the burly back. A second Blue-worm, at the other side of the pacer, drove his fist into Hozman's face, to send Hozman staggering back against the wall of the inn. The Blue-worms continued their ignoble work. The Alula looked on with disgust, half of a mind to intervene, but Karazan called them away. "Let the jackals do as they will; it is none of our affair."

"You call us jackals? " demanded one of the Kash. "That is an insulting epithet! "

"Only for a creature who is not a jackal," said Karazan in a bored voice. "You need not take offense."

The Kash, considerably outnumbered, had no real stomach for a fight and turned back to the saddlebags. Karazan turned away and shook his fist at the sky.