The Fury Out of Time (22 page)

Karvel rose to greet them, experiencing an embarrassment that verged on panic. Not only had he not seen them after the fracas in Bribun, but he had scarcely given a thought to them since. He said shyly, “I never had an opportunity to thank you. I appreciated your help—both of your help—deeply. My plan was not successful, but I did locate the sphere. Perhaps things will turn out all right. I hope so.”

They did not answer, and the silence quickly became awkward. Karvel noticed a dark bruise on Wilurzil’s face. “What happened?” he asked.

“You should see the Bribs who got in her way,” Marnox said.

“I can imagine,” Karvel said, with a glance at Wilurzil’s fingernails. “She’s fortunate she didn’t get scratched herself.”

“How would the Bribs scratch her? Men do not let their nails grow, except the men of the Dunzalo faculties. If they did, how could they get any work done? To fly a plane I need fingers, not knives. Outside Dunzalo only women have long fingernails.”

“That’s understandable.” It was probably a natural law. Deprive a woman of hair to fuss with, and she’d be bound to cultivate her fingernails.

“When will we return to Dunzalo?” Wilurzil asked.

“I suppose you can return whenever you like. As for me, the Overseer had claimed me for himself. Dunzalo and the other cities have already been compensated. It’s too bad that you weren’t informed. You’ve had a trip to the moon for nothing.”

Marnox, untypical Earthman that he was, grinned happily. A trip to the moon was adventure of a sort, and an excuse to stay away from Dunzalo.

Wilurzil’s facial expression was enigmatic. She said accusingly. “You promised to teach me your language.”

“I know I did, but—” Karvel gestured helplessly. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t continue your lessons at least until you return to Dunzalo. Certainly I have nothing else to do. Have you ever been to the moon before?”

Neither of them had. Wilurzil wanted to know where on the waning globe Dunzalo was located, and when Karvel could not tell her she lapsed into a brooding silence. Karvel began a lecture on the history of the Earth, attempting to point out the ways in which it had changed from the Earth that he knew. After a few minutes he glanced at them. Marnox had lost interest, and was studying the dark, jagged peaks of the Lunar Alps. Wilurzil was staring moodily at Karvel.

“My God!” Karvel exclaimed to himself. “I’d hoped that the baser emotions had been bred out of the human race by this time!”

Was it possible, was it even conceivable, that Dunzalo Languages 9-17 was in love with him? He wondered what her reaction would be if she knew how repulsive her appearance was to him. He would have much preferred her with the synthetic orange beard on top of her bald head, rather than on her chin. Her stark figure did not merely deny her femininity, it defied it. And there was her toothless mouth to contend with, and—now that he thought about it—her protruding and decidedly unfeminine ears.

She had lovely, deeply brown eyes, but the remainder of her appearance very forcefully distracted from them.

The fault was not hers, but his. What was the old saying? The beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Sirgan had thought her attractive.

“And what the devil do I look like to her?” he wondered. “I’ll probably never know. In fact, I’d rather not know!”

He must appear at least as strange to her as she did to him, and for her to be in love with him—no. He rejected the idea vehemently. She could not regard him as anything more than an ungainly source for a new and fascinating language.

“You mentioned forty languages,” Wilurzil said.

“The Overseer has them. Unfortunately they are in the silent speech, but I’ll ask him for copies for you. What do you two know about the government?”

The question startled them. Each city on Earth and each tribe of Unclaimed People had its own system of government, no two of them quite alike, but the idea of a government of many worlds was hopelessly beyond their grasp.

Yet Karvel was positive that there must be one. The Overseer’s trading organization had obtained its franchise from someone. Who, if not a government?

“I have something to tell you,” he said. “You probably won’t understand, and even if you do I doubt that you’ll be able to help me. But I can trust you, I think, and it will help a little just to be able to talk about it.”

He told them. Watching their faces in the glowing earthlight he traced the confused history of the U.O. and the basis for his bitter conclusion that he had traveled the wrong direction in time. He added a brief but vivid discussion of the evil use the Overseer was likely to make of the U.O., and his perfidy in selling the inhabitants of Earth into slavery.

“We have two problems,” he said. “One of them is mine—to travel to the remote past and somehow prevent the unhuman beings from sending any more U.O.’s. Yours is much more difficult—to put a stop to this trade in humans. Somewhere behind the Overseer and his trading organization there must be a government, but I haven’t any idea how you’d get in touch with it. Knowing what is in the Overseer’s franchise might be a tremendous help, but it would be in the silent speech. perhaps in a language unknown on Earth, and even if you somehow obtained a copy you couldn’t read it.”

They were gazing at him blankly. Marnox protested, “The Overseer. . .the
Overseer. . .”

“Look,” Karvel said grimly. “I overheard a choice bit of conversation after I had a long talk with the Overseer about the U.O. He was incautiously speaking this Earth language, and he said to his assistant, ‘That’s as much as we’re likely to get out of him. The only question now is how to turn a profit on it.’ As long as he can have his profit he doesn’t care how many people die. But never mind. I don’t suppose these are the kind of problems you’re accustomed to. It’s time to sleep.”

Marnox went off to the quarters Sirgan had assigned to him, but Wilurzil remained, demanding a language lesson, and Karvel gave her a language lesson. He made no further attempt to analyze her motives. He’d had difficulty enough in attempting to understand the women of his own time.

Finally she left him to the nocturnal ordeal with his mountains.

The Overseer had finally emerged from his harem when Karvel awoke, and was testily dealing with an accumulation of messages. Karvel moved about the administration room studying the large, tremendously detailed metallic maps of the moon that were posted on the walls, obviously a heritage from a time when a knowledge of the moon’s surface had been important to someone. The Overseer rudely ignored him.

Then Marnox and Wilurzil entered. Face puckered roguishly, the Overseer sprang forward with effusive greetings.

He drew Karvel aside, and said, grinning slyly, “Now I see why my women don’t interest you. But perhaps we can work a trade.”

“Trade?
But she isn’t mine to trade! She’s just my language teacher.”

“I wouldn’t mind being taught a language,” the Overseer said, with a boorish laugh. “I’ll trade you—three for one?”

“She doesn’t belong to me! Dunzalo gave her the job of teaching me the language, and when I left they sent her to bring me back.”

“Then you belong to her,” the Overseer said. “That’s even better. Excuse me.”

He talked briefly with Wilurzil. and returned frowning “Stubborn little thing—but no matter. I’ll trade Dunzalo for her.”

“Dunzalo might not let her go. She has a fairly high number. She’s Languages 9-17, and she seems to be an accomplished scholar.”

“She’s one of the bearded ones, too. I suppose there’s a taboo involved—life pledged to learning, or some such thing. I’ll look it up. But these Earth cities will trade anyone, if they’re offered enough. Languages 9-17, is it? I’ll trade for her the next time I go to Dunzalo. She’s even worth a special trip. Lovely thing—what she must look like without that beard! On second thought, though, maybe I like her better with it on.”

Karvel turned a wondering gaze on Wilurzil. Was her face tapered more beautifully than those of other Earth-women, or was it her unusually small stature that made her attractive? He’d seen so few women since he arrived in the future, and paid so little attention to those he had seen, that he had no basis for comparison.

“Have you eaten?” he asked Marnox. “The food here may not be to your liking.”

“It isn’t,” Marnox said with a grimace. “They will send for some of our food if we stay long.”

“I’ve already sent for some,” the Overseer called. “You’ll be here a long time—both of you.”

Later that day a returning Shuttle brought a trio of doctors, gaunt, tall, solemn individuals with the most beautifully shaped, long-fingered surgeon’s hands that Karvel had ever seen. With Marnox and Wilurzil looking on, they examined Karvel carefully, took measurements, pondered the stump of his right leg.

“Have you attained your full growth?” one of them asked.

“I should hope so!” Karvel exclaimed.

The answer disturbed them. They rechecked their measurements, and communicated their concern in long, silent glances.

“How long will I be incapacitated by this operation?” Karvel asked.

“That is difficult to say. We may be unable to find an adult limb of the proper size, which would mean that two operations would be necessary.”

“Two
operations? Yes, I think I understand. The alternative would be to have one knee fifteen or twenty inches higher than the other, which I wouldn’t like.”

“The rule is to join only adult limbs to adults. If we were to violate the rule and join you to the limb of a child, that limb might continue to grow. I don’t know if this is true, because to my knowledge it has never been necessary to violate the rule.”

“Just a moment. Have you ever performed such an operation?”

“Certainly. Once when I was quite young, and again only seventeen Earth-years ago. It is a simple operation, and recovery is usually quite rapid, but few of our people ever lose their limbs.”

“All right,” Karvel said. “I’ll have the operation. But no experiments. One operation, with a guaranteed short convalescence, or nothing doing. I hope to leave very soon on a long journey, and there may not be any surgeons where I’m going. I’d be worse off than I am now if one of my legs started to grow.”

“Then it is a question of finding an adult limb as abnormally proportioned as yours. That will not be easy.”

“You could take my leg,” Wilurzil said.

They all stared at her, Karvel open-mouthed.

“I have my growth,” she went on. “And my height is similar to his.”

The surgeon carefully ran the beam of his measuring light over her leg. “That is true,” he agreed. “There is not enough difference to matter. We shall join you to her leg.”

“What would that accomplish?” Karvel demanded. “Then she’d have only one leg.”

“She contemplates no such journey as yours. We could, at our leisure, join her to another leg, and it would not matter how much additional surgery were required.”

“It would matter to me,” Karvel said. “No. Positively no. Where do you usually get these spare limbs?”

“We keep an extensive stock of spare human parts,” the surgeon said stiffly.

“Well, find me a leg in that extensive stock, or forget the whole business. And even if you find one, there’ll be no operation unless you can guarantee a remarkably fast recovery. One thing more. Where were you planning to perform this operation?”

“Why, here. The Overseer said—”

“Have you ever performed an operation on the moon?”

“No, but—”

“Such an operation performed under low gravity would be exceedingly dangerous. I might not survive. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

The doctors exchanged startled glances. “No. No, we didn’t know that.”

“That’s strange. It’s common knowledge, where I come from. Tell the Overseer that the operation must take place on Earth, which is the only sensible place for it anyway— close to your stock of spare parts. We can’t have you running back and forth carrying legs until you find one that fits.”

“It would be much more convenient to do it on Earth,” the surgeon admitted.

“And much safer—don’t forget that. Tell the Overseer now. I’m ready to leave any time.”

Karvel tossed out the suggestion on a quixotic impulse, with no illusions that the wily Overseer could be taken in by such an unsubtle ruse. He was dumfounded when the Overseer appeared a short time later to tell him he could leave immediately.

“It’s only common sense to have the operation performed at Lewir,” he said.

“Lewir?”

“That’s the medical city. Anything they might need would be right at hand. I don’t know where they got the stupid notion that an operation here on the moon would be dangerous, but they have it, and it’s best to humor them. You can leave as soon as the Shuttle is ready.”

“I’d rather have the operation here on the moon,” Karvel said. If the Overseer wanted to snatch at the first feeble excuse to send him back to Earth, he was probably furthering some deep plot of his own. Karvel had naively allowed himself to be outmaneuvered.

“Nonsense,” the Overseer said. “The Shuttle is almost ready. Don’t keep it waiting.”

Marnox appeared a moment later and asked, “What’s the matter?”