The Fleet Book 2: Counter Attack (14 page)

“Otaî,” I said, “it seems to me that you and all your people have a problem. On the one hand, you keep on talking about how you despise the Khalia. On the other hand, you talk about them as though they were something special. Okay, let’s get it out into the open. What, in your estimation, is so special about the race you refer to as ‘Dwarf Men with Too Many Teeth’?”

“Why, obviously,” Otaî said, “the Panya are despicable and hateful. But it is equally obvious that they have
feii.”

“And what,” I demanded, “is
feii?
”

“Feii,”
he told me, “is the quality that makes one person or being of higher or lower social rank than another. It emanates from a variety of factors.”

“I’ve never heard the expression before,” I told Otaî. “Is it much in use among your people?”

“It’s something we think about quite a lot, or rather, take into consideration. Probably nobody mentioned it to you humans because we didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just that you humans have very little
feii.”

I became immediately and irrationally angry. How dare this six-foot chicken with a silly red crest on top of his narrow foolish head say that we humans were deficient in
feii!
I controlled myself with an effort and asked him, “What about the Khalia? Do you mean to say they’ve got
feii
and
we don’t?”

“Yes, precisely,” Otaî said. “But don’t get cross with me about it. It’s not my fault that things are that way. Anyhow, in the matter of
feii
the Khalia have one obvious advantage over you.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, tight-lipped.

“It’s just that they’ve been on our planet for fifty years,” Otaî said. “They’ve had time to learn about us, what we think proper, what we consider good form, and what we don’t like, too.”

“Give me an example.”

“Well, for one thing, you expose your entire arms like a common
horoji.
None of us ever do, have you noticed? And the Khalia not only cover their elbows, but wear the blue
anaraji
elbow-covers of rank whenever they go out of doors.”

“And that really makes a difference?”

“A tremendous difference. Not just any single thing, but the cumulative effect of all of them. Not just the
anaraji
elbow-covers, but also the crimson eyelid paint which we call
tauriang,
and the other things; like
heligo-dun, vastiis, molocatia,
and there are more. The Khalia have learned them, and have adopted them. They’ve increased their
feii
so much that they’ve passed quite beyond the class of human creature, into the realm of the godlike. That’s why we continue to respect them even though they’re out of power. We Nedge of the Guilds do not like to betray godlike beings. It can bring very bad luck.”

With Woodpecker’s help I drew up a list of the things which conferred
feii.
All of them involved clothing or ornaments. The Khalia wore them, we did not. That was the explanation for our low status on Target, and for the continued prestige of the despised Khalia. Already my trip had proven of value. When I was able to tell Bar Kochba about this, I had no doubt he would make the wearing of these items obligatory for our troops.

One thing still puzzled me about
feii.
“If that’s all it takes, why don’t all the Nedge raise themselves in status? It seems simple enough. The orange
achiki,
for example, which confers rank in minor nobility. It’s just a piece of cloth and two strips of leather tied around the left foot.”

“We could never do that,” Woodpecker said. “Status is either hereditary, or conferred by services to the Guild, or sanctioned by
na-aringi.”

“What’s that?” I asked him.

“Na-aringi
refers to divine irresistible impulse. It’s impossible to fake.”

I didn’t correct him. The Khalians had made good use of the doctrine of
na-aringi,
and so would we. Here was the explanation for our low status on Target, and for the continued prestige of the Khalia. That would change as soon as I got back to headquarters.

Just now there were other things to think about. According to Woodpecker, we were within a half-day’s trek of the Khalian camp, and the secret spaceship factory, or whatever it was.

IX.

The night was dark, and a cold wind whipped over the desert floor. We had been climbing for several hours, steadily and without a stop. Little pebbles skittered and rolled under our feet as we negotiated a narrow pass between bulging boulders and came to a long sloping escarpment. We began our descent between knife-sharp ridges. I didn’t ask Woodpecker how much farther we had to go. By his nervousness, evident through a constant ruffling of his tailfeathers, I knew we were close. We came to a pass, went through it, and Woodpecker searched around for landmarks. I risked using a pencil-thin beam of light to help him orient himself. He seemed doubtful, unsure of himself. Then he said, “Here’s the entrance!”

It was through a maze of tumbled boulders. After passing through them, we found steps roughly hewn into the rock. They led downward.

We went down for a considerable distance. I estimated that we were some hundreds of feet below the surface. Woodpecker led me down a passageway, dimly lit with glow bulbs set into niches. We came to the end, and turned a corner, and I came to an abrupt halt, because the stone ledge ended abruptly.

I steadied myself, looked outward, and then I beheld it. I was in a cavern that seemed as vast as thought itself, bathed in an eerie green from natural luminescence in the rocks. It stretched as far as the eye could see, beneath a lowering vault of stone. It was a view of boundlessness rigorously framed—an oxymoron of stone and space.

And on that cavern floor, lying there with the dignity of industrial archeology, in an awesome iconization of technological power, lay a vast grouping of spaceships. At first, I could only make out their rounded steel hulls, gleaming blue or grey, reflections winking off their surfaces. Then I noticed their disarray, for they were piled one atop another in the familiar disorder of the junkyard.

I had no time to consider the shattering implications of this find, however. I noticed that Woodpecker had stepped back, and his movement set off a faint alarm in my mind. I turned, groping for my cluster pistol. Shadows were detaching themselves from the walls, coming toward me. In the gloom, I caught the gleam of pointed teeth, and I tried to swing my weapon into firing position. Too late. Something crashed against the side of my head. I knew that I was falling, but I was unconscious before I hit the ground.

X.

When I recovered consciousness, my first emotion was one of amazement that I was not dead. My gratitude gave way to darker emotions when I remembered that the Khalia take prisoners mainly for the purpose of providing themselves with a supply of fresh meat. They are pure carnivores, and their eating habits are said to resemble Terran leopards or hyenas. They were cannibals at one time in their history, until they developed a sense of racial identity. Now they feast on the flesh of others, as do we humans. They generally like their meat fresh and bloody, just killed, for then it still contains the
mana
that makes for strength. There are exceptions to this fresh meat rule, however: as the Khalians developed their rudimentary civilization, they also acquired a fondness for meat that is “high,” which is to say, rotten. They would appreciate the old Earth recipe for jugged hare, in which you keep the carcass in a jug until it comes apart at the touch, rottenness and tenderness being synonymous. I hoped that fate was not intended for me.

I was seated on the ground in a cavelike structure. A rope was tied around my ankle, the other end of which was affixed to an iron staple in the wall. Examining the knot, I saw that I could undo it without great difficulty. But I did not—I had heard that there was nothing the Khalia liked better than to find one of their animated food supplies trying to escape from the den. Our reports said that such attempts were invariably detected, and the unfortunate victim was turned over to the cubs to snack on, then tied up again half-dead from wounds, to await his fate as a living appetizer.

I sat on the ground, nursing my bruised head and silently lamenting my bad luck. After a while, three Khalian warriors came to inspect me. They were about four feet tall, and they wore short, multicolored garments that resembled kilts. The colors, I learned later, were a form of war-band identification. They wore a leather harness crossed around their narrow chests and cinched around their waists. From this harness depended a variety of hand weapons—swords and short axes, knives of various sorts, whips, a lariat, and several kinds of small arms. They jabbered at me in their barking language, then, seeing I did not understand, howled in unison until Woodpecker came running up to translate for them.

“They want you to stand up. They will release your bonds, They want you to accompany them quietly. It would be best for you if you did so, because they haven’t had lunch yet and any show of resistance might set off in them a feeding frenzy. That is not a good thing to see, especially when you would be the object of their appetites.”

“Tell them they have nothing to fear from me,” I said bitterly. “You arranged this yourself, didn’t you, Otaî?”

”Yes, Judah. But do not think badly of me. I was forced to do it because of my Guild Pledge, which is the most sacred duty of any Nedge in his capacity as a Guild member.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. Before Otaî could tell me more the Khalian warriors had untied me and led me away by jerking on the rope they had tied around my neck and emitting sharp yapping cries.

My guards led me through winding underground passageways, all the time yapping and growling among themselves; discussing different ways of serving me up, no doubt. They brought me to a large chamber hewn out of the rock. One of them, who spoke a little English, pointed to a chair with a forepaw.

“Sit!” he said. “No move! Tostig, he come.”

I sat down. The guards left. I looked around, but saw nothing that could be used as a weapon. This seemed not the time to try anything. Later I hoped to have a better opportunity. If there was a later. Meanwhile, I waited for this Tostig to come. No doubt he wanted to sample me to see if I was suitable for one of their beastly feasts.

After a while a single Khalian brave entered the chamber. “Hello, I’m Tostig,” he said, in clear, barely accented English. He was larger than the others. His kilt was edged with purple, his harness was studded with silver ornaments. He had a swagger to him and an air of confidence that bespoke a leader.

“I am Captain Judah ben Judah,” I told him.

“Delighted,” Tostig said. He threw his scabbarded sword into a corner, peeled off his gauntlets and threw them after his sword, then dropped carelessly into a couch. There he yawned, stretched, kicked off his boots and stretched out his claws.

“You know,” he said, “it’s damned hard to make a boot that fits nicely over a paw. The claws get in the way.”

There seemed no immediate reply to that, so I remained silent. But I was interested in Tostig. It is difficult to read alien physiognomies and Tostig resembled, of course, a very large weasel. But he gave me the impression of a level-headed fighting man, gallant, even-tempered, and of a humorous and even ironic turn of mind.

“Well, Captain,” he said, “your people have pulled a good one on us today. Caught one of our groups coming out of a town after a raid. They were all bunched together and singing one of their fighting songs, the silly bastards. Your people cut them down. I’ve told them often enough to spread out whenever there’s a chance that enemies might be around. Make less of a target for a beam or projectile attack. Easy enough to understand, I think. But do they listen? Not this lot. Spreading out’s un-Khalia-like, they tell me. Lessens our ferocity. The good old-fashioned Khalian way is good enough for us—in a pack, all teeth and claws. No arguing with the silly buggers. So we lost seven. A good one for your side.”

From his expression and tone of voice, he bore me no ill will. He might have been announcing the score at a tennis match for all the emotion he showed.

“But I can’t really expect you to sympathize with me, can I?” he went on in his good-humored way. “Hereditary enemies and all that. Our loss is your gain, eh? And vice versa, of course.”

“I suppose it is,” I said. “But you didn’t arrange all this to discuss planetary destinies with me.”

“True enough!” he said. “Time I put you in the picture.”

“Before you do that, there’s one thing I’d like to know,” I told him.

“Ask away!” he said.

“Am I to be a main course at one of your banquets, or do you consider me more in the category of snack food?”

Tostig exploded with laughter. “Oh, I say, that
is
good! You must admit it is rather droll, to have a conversation with snack food. But fear not; you’re my guest. And whereas it’s possible that in the long run I may have to kill you if things don’t work out, for the present you’re perfectly safe and I can assure you all the civilized amenities will be observed.”

“Might I enquire,” I asked, “where you learned your excellent English?”

“As it happens I was a guest for a while in the London Zoo on the planet Earth. In fact, I was the main attraction in their Horrifying Predators Exhibition. Managed to break out after a while, steal a ship and get back to my war band. But I shall never forget the kindness of the British. Yes, in a way those were good days . . . but forgive me, I seem to be forgetting my hospitality.”

Tostig jumped off the couch in one effortless bound, crossed to the sideboard, lifted a bottle.

“Whiskey, Captain Judah? We picked it up last month in a raid on one of your outposts. Not to the taste of us Khalia, but I keep it around for occasions like this.”

I accepted a glass. Tostig poured himself a glass of what I later learned was a kind of fermented milk from a tanned skin sack hanging from the wall.