The Enemy of My Enemy (24 page)

Sarlamat made a haggard and weary motion with his face. He spoke, he said words. But not the words he was thinking. The Lermencasi could not care less about the Seven Signs and those who had them. He had sent signals, yes; scores of them. The reaction was principally anger against himself and Mothiosant for allowing events to get out of control. Anger was followed by suspicion, suspicion by caution. And then all emotion vanished behind clouds of words, phrases, regrets. What the Lermencasi would send — if anything — he could not guess. Himself, he had abandoned hope, would have tried to make his own escape, but these officious fools had trapped him here, and he did not know if he could make himself free of them again, or what good it might do him if he could. So he huddled in his, robes of red-upon-red and let the day’s events unreel and gallop before his sunken, troubled, despairing eyes.

The vanishing-away of the Quasi colony which huddled in its disorder beyond the green belt of park and trees protecting the town from its contamination — this should have served him as warning: just as the abrupt drying-up of a spring warns of earthquake, as the abnormal retreat of the sea warns of tidal wave: it should have. But he was preoccupied, and it did not. They had heard a rumor, they were panic-stricken; he thought no more of it than this. Too, there were reports that a number of floats were missing, but when (preoccupied again, only partially considering the matter) he’d asked about it, his clerks assured him that it was nothing. A minor irregularity, soon to be set right. Isolated incidents — now, looking back, they seemed like plain informations, thick and fast. The border warden who had half-crashed his float and struggled from it to babble of Volanth who had made his house disappear by stoning it with
gorum-
rocks. Surely he was mad … no more. Three tally clerks coming back from a routine trip to check stores at Compound Five, two in one float and the other in a second, why — what could one have made of their confused account (the two, that is) of the third one in his single craft being alongside of them one moment and the next moment it had blown up? An engine fault, nothing more. The hydrofoil reported aground and half-destroyed. The failure of Compound Six to reply when signaled. And so on, and so on. Each, at the time, had appeared to be unconnected with the other. And so the day had passed, and although anxious at not seeing Mothiosant and puzzled about confused reports from Rophas Town, Sarlamat had still been able to retire at night and even to sleep.

He had not slept long.

The Volanth had swept down from the Outlands, seemingly, in full force. They had swarmed out of the hills and forests, the brush country and the marshes, the river valleys and the plains, like some abnormal animal migration — like
par
, fleeing before a fire. Clearly, not all of them had come afoot. Certainly some of the attacks had been made by air. The Bahon — infinitely clever of the Bahon though it all was, still — how could they have known where and how to attack the floats, first? so that escape was rendered all but impossible? Well, it didn’t matter, it was a minor mystery. Baho was the equal of Lermencas. It was the Volanth, the Volanth!

Each had come laden with sacks of skin or baskets of withes, but their burdens contained no common contents. Their burdens had grown lighter as they proceeded onward. And then, apparently, had grown heavier again. A rock in the hands of a Volanth was in itself a deadly weapon. The wild men could hit a bird on the wing at an incredible space, strike down a running rat at an unbelievable distance. Since the days of
The Volanthani
it had of course been illegal for them to possess even a club or a spear, a bow or an arrow. But no one could legislate against a rock! which in any event might be dropped and lost as soon as a patrol appeared. Nature supplied them with these weapons at every hand, and in a thousand years a very high degree of skill indeed can be developed.

Out of the forest and out of the night they came. One black egg cast like a stone through the black night. One house destroyed. If by chance the sound of screams indicated survivors, throw another. If by much, much rarer chance, a fire-charge speaks and shines in the darkness, one black egg dashed at the point the sound and sight came from. Then, in the darkness, press on. Press on. For a thousand years is a long, long time … and so is the half a thousand years which went before them.

Sarlamat snapped back into the present. Othofarinal had spoken to him. With difficult courtesy, he asked the Guardian to speak again. Silvery hair all awry, the Tarnisi repeated, “These foreign toys, the ones just long and broad enough for a single man — surely something might be done with them, I must hope? It is reported that many of them are at the sport pavilion at the river. Myself, my brother’s son — Oh. Oh. I do not know. They are foreign things. You know of such inventions. We do not. Can nothing be done?”

Slowly, slowly, the outlines of an idea took form in Sar-lamat’s mind. “It is my thought that something might be done. But before proceeding to the river, you will accompany me to the armory, I must hope.” He said this. And he arose.

• • •

Tonoro walked slowly through the dust- and rubble-choked streets of Tarnis Town Tarnis, Thias, Rophas, all of the jewel-like cities of Tarnis which he had visited, all were the same. They glittered no more, their towers lay in the dust, their gardens were choked with ashes. Now and then, from one side or another, an echoing
crump
was heard. Perhaps some survivor had unwisely shown himself, maddened by grief or fear or thirst. Perhaps a Volanth was merely enjoying the noise and the still-novel sight of the destruction produced so easily and quickly. From time to time he heard — and saw — evidence that the Volanth were enjoying themselves in other ways as well. Sometimes the unwise survivor was a woman. More than once he had seen the events of the levy re-enacted in reverse, with now the hairy man pursuing the smooth woman. And, as before, always, always, the man overtook the woman. Threw her on her back in the dust and spread her shaking legs and mounted her … .

In his heart, Tonoro knew that no memory or mention of outrage could justify any other outrage. He knew in his heart that he should interfere. But he did not. His heart could convey no command to hand or mouth, for his heart was frozen. Atoral was dead.

He wore, as all the Quasi wore — and all the Volanth, they imagining it to be a sort of insigna or badge; no one told them otherwise — a strip of cloth bound around his head. It was dangerous, it might be fatal to be without it. Those same Signs which the Quasi had once been so glad to possess, or so bitter and aggrieved at not possessing them, were now no defense, but a danger. He, Tonoro, Quasi son of a Quasi, who had in his childhood, not much beyond his infancy, been hunted by the Tarnisi because he was a Quasi — he, that same Tonoro, who had so eagerly and so unwittingly paid to have himself transformed into the immaculate semblance of a Tarnisi — he now wore a strip of rag, filthier than a Voîanth’s breechclout, bound around his once-proud head, lest the questing Volanth should now mistake him for a Tarnisi.

Atoral’s body he had not seen. He thought it was better that he had not, that he could not. Cominthal, with the same impatience with which he had promised the Tulan’s house immunity, had announced that it had been destroyed despite that promise. “He did not know. I am sorry. It was a most regrettable error … .”

And the Volanth himself, a “civilized” one, who had in his earlier life even been licensed to live among the Tarnisi for a period for some purpose or other, he, too, repeated, and with evidence of sincere sorrow, “I did not know. I am sowwy. It was a most wegwetable ewwo.” Genuine sorrow showed on his bearded face. He was not naked, none of them were anymore (save when they chose to be, in sordid scenes), all of them without exception now wore Tarnisi clothes … wore them with a proud air, and … curiously … wore them well. Tonoro noted this with an ice-bound detachment that alone saved him from the horror of the irony: his world was dead, and he made mental fashion notes.

He remembered her, placing her fingers so gently on his wrist so soon after their first meeting, remembered her lovely body, so rich in promise, moving so confidently through the cool waters of the lake. Remembered her body in his arms, her voice in his ears. She had asked so little of him and had given him so much. While she was alive he had at first enjoyed their present without thought or care for a future in which they might not be together. More recently, as events had quickened, then rushed, he had at last begun to consider it. Atoral anywhere than in Tarnis? Atoral, daughter of Tarnis, and — when all was said and done — daughter of Tarnis’s almost instinctive social code, the lover of a Quasi? The
wife
of one? He had decided that it was better, his not being able to see her, dead. But he could not and would not, despite every known negative, take the glib and evil way of thinking it was better that she was dead.

At least, though, he could see to it that murder and massacre did not reign unchallenged. He had been unable to do this when the Volanth were victims, those events had come too swift, too soon, he had been swept up in them; too, he had not known all that there was to know, had seen only their guilt before it was swallowed up in the greater guilt of their oppressors. But at least he was now able to see to it that the pattern wasn’t totally reproduced in reverse. He had set aside designated areas of the port as sanctuary. When first one and then another and then a third Lermencasi freighter had unwarily put down and immediately been taken, their cargo of floats and fire-charges unloaded and confiscated, he had been able to see that all Tarnisi who had surrendered were allowed to leave on the freighters. His plans hadn’t gone unchallenged.

Opposition had not come principally from either Volanth or Quasi, but from Bishdar Shronk, the Bahon agent. Impassionedly. “All of them deserve death,” he had all but roared. “Fifteen hundred years of crime requires it! And all of these, too,” he growled, his gesture taking in the quaking freightermen, “they deserve it, too, for their complicity.”

But Tonoro had held firm. And when one of the last of the refugees had gone aboard — an older woman, he could not remember her name, but he could remember that she had visited him once and invited him to visit her (“We are famous for our sunken gardens … . I have charming granddaughters … .” What had happened to those gardens, cultivated with immense care for centuries? More: What had happened to those granddaughters?) — when she turned from departure and asked him, in a voice gone far beyond either despair or accusation, a question not even rhetorical, “You see what the Bahon are. How could you have allowed yourself to work with them?” —

— He had answered only in the words of the ancient proverb “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

It was ironic, perhaps, that the palatial offices of the Commercial Delegation had not been harmed. Headquarters had, accordingly, been set up there, and there it was that Tonoro returned after his tour of the ruined city. There was much to do — food to be gathered and distribution guaranteed, the wounded to be attended to, the dead to be buried —

Without his asking it or without anyone’s asking him to, he was now a leader. The Volanth in their new clothes came to him and asked him questions.

“There are Tarnisi hidden in the caves in such-and-such a place, my mother’s son. Men and women and children. It is too difficult to reach them with the
gorum-eggs
. You will have those of the part-blood who know how to handle floats take us up so that we can attack them, I must hope.”

“No. When I was a child they tried to kill me. Enough children have been killed. That’s not the way of civilization. I will take a Pemathi and give him a message offering them safe-conduct for surrender, and you will see that it is done.”

“It will be done that way, then, I must hope, my brother’s son.”

Agreement was not always reached. The Bahon — how soon they arrived! They spoke to him of plans for reconstruction, complex and promising plans. But he found himself dozing over them. Guards were posted; he retired for the night to the soft couch in the guest room where visitors had in former times
(former times!)
been offered recreation, and fell into troubled dreams. Someone shook him. A Pemathi. Aten aDuc. How did he come to be here in Tarnis? How was it that the freighters were so near? He could hear their blasts, the building was shaking too.

“What?” he cried, on his feet.

“The river!” someone shouted. Not Aten aDuc. Atén a Due was not here. The noise was something else, something else that he did not know. “The river is on fire! The river is blowing up!”

And so it was and so it was. From the roof of the Delegation building he watched it, coiling through the city like a blazing serpent. Again and again the air and the ground and the water trembled with the explosions. Masses of burning matter hurtled through the air, fell upon the ruins and rubble, set them soon on fire. In a quarter of an hour the whole of Tarnis Town was all ablaze, the night was brighter and hotter than the day had ever been. It was impossible to fight it, it was — in the state of wreckage — useless even to try. He ordered a retreat to the port, far enough from both river and town.

The city blazed all that night and all that next day. The Volanth, in accounting for the rains which finally extinguished it, said that “the heat had melted the clouds.” But that came later. It was still pouring when reports came that the Tarnisi had, somehow, rallied, and were attacking.

The report was true. They had come out of the steaming ruins, preceded by floats, the floats vanishing into the concealing rain as the attackers proceeded slowly on foot. Many pockets of them must have contributed to their numbers, for the work of mopping up had scarcely begun. Warily, the two groups approached. The Tarnisi seemed to lack cohesion, organization. Part of them scattered, part retreated. Still the Volanth came on. The five-dem unit was by far the more potent weapon, but if the Tarnisi could push through a mass fire-charge before —