Var the Stick (23 page)

    Still, they had set the pattern, meeting his honest if naive approach with dishonesty. Var's ethics of civilization were not fundamentally ingrained, for he had come by them only through his contact with the Master, and had not had them reinforced by his adventures beyond America. He treated other men as they treated hini-and he knew how to look out for himself, thus warned.

    He threw away the paper and continued to the gladiatonal pen. This was a high wire stockade at whose corners wooden towers rose. A man with a rifle stood watch within each edifice, facing toward the center.

    Nearby were the animal cages. Tigers, bison, snakes, vicious dogs-and some mutants from the badlands. These were set up as a sideshow when not in use. From the healing wounds some had, Var inferred that they were used repeatedly. Probably the gladiators were given a bonus for defeating an animal impressively without killing it.

    He scouted the rest of the compound. This was an off day. The shows only took place every three of four afternoons. Relatively few sightseers like himself were about. In one side lot there Were several trucks, used for transporting animals and equipment from time to time. The show traveled every few months, seeking new pasture and new audience-and perhaps as a hedge against too great an accumulation of vengeance-minded suckers.

    Satisfied, Var retreated to a comfortable wilderness patch and slept. He would be busy tonight.

    At night, refreshed, Var re-entered the compound, using his well-versed stealth. He prised down a window in a locked truck, got the door open, used pliers on the wiring in the manner he had learned as a handyman dealing with balky equipment, and unblocked the wheels. Then he moved to the nearest guard tower, climbed it noiselessly and tapped the rifleman on the head with a makeshift singlestick. He did the same for the second tower, having learned from his brief experience with Ch'in's men not to give a man with a gun any chance to react. The section of fence between these two points was partially out of sight of the far towers, so a passage was clear. Var took metal clippers and made a hole. He entered, carrying a handgun and flashlight taken from the second guard.

    The gladiators were in a locked shed that reeked of excrement. Var used screwdriver and crowbar to unlock it with minimum noise, working on the side away from the manned towers. He knew the occupants would overhear, but would not give him away. They might, however, attempt to overpower him and make their own escape. He had to be ready.

    He kicked open the door, shone the light inside, and stood back. "I have a gun," he said softly in the local dialect. Then, in American: "Come out singly and make no sound-if you want your freedom."

    "Var the Stick!" the Master said at once, but low, for he was well aware that they had to stay below the hearing level of the tower guards. His bulk showed in the doorway. "Do you bring a gun to meet me?"

    That familiar voice sent a shiver through him, but Var answered firmly. "No. This is not the circle. You swore to kill me because you thought I had killed your daughter. I did not kill her. I will take you to her now."

    There was a long pause. "Not my daughter-his," the Master said at last. And Sol appeared beside him, a somber shape. "We suspected as much, when we had the description of the boy you traveled with. But we didn't know- and you kept running~ So we had to follow."

    So the entire chase had been for nothing! Var could have taken Soli to the Master, or even let Sol see her, that time they met in the circle, and the oath would have been voided. It would not even have affected the contest for the mountain, because Bob had already reniged on that agreement. Such irony!

    Var looked up to discover the Master before him, well within striking range. But of course the Weaponless would not have struck, outside the circle-not against one who shared that convention. And had he wanted to violate the code, he could have thrown something. Except that his thumb was missing; that would have made it harder.

    "I should have questioned you," the Nameless One said. "A day after you were gone, I knew I had acted wrongly, for you had done only what I sent you to do. It was the mountain Helicon that betrayed us both. Betrayed Sol too, for he did not know that his child had been sent-until he learned that she was dead."

    Var remembered that Soli had said her parents hadn't known, that Bob almost never told the truth, and that she had cooperated because of Bob's threat against their lives. Ugly business-the underworld master's revenge for the nomad attack. "That's why he came-to avenge her?"

    "To bury her. He had already avenged her when he slew Bob and fired Heicon. Sosa-disappeared in that carnage. All that was left was to bury Soli-but he could not find her body. So he came-and by the time we met and worked it out, you were gone again, with your... sister."

    They were wasting time. "Come with me," Var said. "She is in-in a school. There will be trouble."

    It was as though there bad never been strife between them. They came: the Master, Sol, and four other gladiators of diverse and grotesque aspect. Var led them through the fence and past the animal cages, ready to loose the beasts upon the compound if any alarm were cried. But, almost disappointingly, there was no disturbance. They piled into the truck and Var started it, using the shorted wiring. They were off.

    Emperor Ch'in had arrived, together with more of his retinue, by the time the truckful of gladiators nudged into the vicinity and parked surreptitiously near the school grounds. Uniformed troops were everywhere. A frontal attack would have been sheer folly. And-they still were not sure how Soli would feel about it.

    "She did not ask to attend the school?" the Master inquired. "She was satisfied to travel with you?"

    "So she said," Var admitted. "A year ago. But she was growing up...."

    "Now she is grown-why should the situation be otherwise? Would you have her roam again?"

    Terrible uncertainty smote him. "I don't know."

    "This Ch'in-I have heard of him. Isn't that a good marriage?"

    "Yes."

    "But you don't want her to have it?"

    Var became even more confused. "I want to talk to her. If she wants to marry Ch'in-"

    The Master grunted. "We shall put her to the test"

    They spent the night in the truck in the woods. The Chinese gladiators went after food and gasoline zestfully, enjoying this lark. The Master questioned him on every aspect of his association with Soli, while Sol, eerily silent, listened. It occurred to Var that be did not know what was in the minds of these men. So far as Soli was concerned, their reactions were suspect. They might have no sympathy whatever with his blunted desires.

    But he discovered that he had lost his independence of action since releasing these men. The Master dominated the entire group, and his intelligence radiated out almost tangibly. Var thought he recognized in this man some of the qualities that made Soli what she was-that had, in fact, attracted him- to her-yet the Master denied siring her. So things bad been thrown into confusion again.

    Var peered from the concealed truck while the others marched off to attend the graduation ceremony, his heart pounding. Eager to act, he was helpless, dependent on the motives of others, uncertain of his own.

    CHAPTER NINETEEN

    Soli slept fitfully. The events of her life passed through her mind, now that she faced a drastic change. She did not remember her early residence among the nomads-only snow and terrible cold, her father Sol protecting her though they both meant to die. Then, somehow, they were alive again, painfully so, and Sosa was her new mother. And after the shock of change, it bad been good, for Sosa was a remarkable woman-at once devastating in combat and loving in person. And the underworld was fascinating.

    Until Bob had acquainted her with the brutality of politics and sent her out with her sticks to defend her way of life from the savages.

    She bad supposed all nomads to be mutilated, for Sol had been one and he had no genitals, and Sosa had been one and she was barren. Var had had splotched skin and funny hands and a hunch in his back. Yet Sosa bad taught her that appearance meant little In a man; that his endurance and skill in combat were more important, and his personality more important still. "If a man is strong and honest and kind-like your father-trust in him and make him your friend," bad been her advice.

    The men of the underworld had not met this simple set of standards. Jim the Librarian was honest and kind and intelligent, but not strong; a single blow to the gut would have put him in the infirmary. Bob the Leader was strong but neither honest nor kind. In fact, only her father Sol met Sosa's standards. So She learned the art of the sticks from him, and learned it well, and waited.

    And Ugly Var had been strong, if not as skilled with the sticks as the. And he bad been honest, for he bad not dropped rocks on her, though she would have dodged any that might have come. And he had been kind, for he had protected her against the awful cold, even as her father had done before. That was the one enemy she could not face boldly: she hated and feared the cold.

    So she had known him for a good man, though he was an enemy savage-and she had never been- disappointed subsequently. Oh, he was not exactly smart-but neither was Sol. Men like Bob and the Nameless One were awesome, because their minds were more deadly than their bodies. She preferred an associate whose motives she could fathom.

    At what point this appreciation had phased into love she was not certain. It had been a gradual thing, deepening with further association and ripening with her womanhood. But she tended to place the transition at the time she had been stung in the cold by the poisonous bug, and he had carried her all the way back to the cabin and cared for her there. She had been conscious much of the time, but unable to move or respond. Thus she had observed him when he supposed himself effectively alone, and knew that he had fought for her long before he confessed as much.

    She had decided then to take his golden bracelet-when she was old enough to do so and to honor the full commitment the act implied. When she had learned that Sol was following them, too, she had stayed with Var despite her ache to rejoin her father, knowing she would lose Var if she let him go on alone. Then he had saved her from the tunnel sweeper, and from the vicious amazons, and yet again from the radiation she could not detect for herself. And once more, in the boat: he had intercepted with his own body the arrows marked for her.

    Five times he had preserved her life at peril to his own, asking nothing in return, not even her company unless freely given. He was quite a man, and not merely for his courage and sacrifice. If she had not loved him already, she would surely have done so then. But when she brought them to New Crete he had been dying. Then she bad seen the manner she had to repay her debt to him. For a moment she had been tempted to cash in his golden bracelet, realizing its disproportionate value there; but that would have made it unavailable for her own subsequent possession and what went with it. And they might just have taken it as they took the boat, with no return favor. Though they both might die, she could not bring herself to give up that dream.

    So it had had to be the temple-the one offering they could not simply claim offhand, the one bargain she could hold them to. She had cried, not so much for herself as for her loss of him. She had known, via the temple grapevine, that he had settled into a mundane task, and she suffered to imagine how that demeaned him while she thrilled to believe that he missed her as she missed him. Sweet girlish dreams, nonsensical but essential She even fancied that he watched her from time to time1 romantically, that he might even challenge the god Minos for her.

    And then be had come, just when she was resigned to her violent demise. And she had told him no, crying yes! inside, and pushed him away while yearning for his embrace. For it was her commitment that had saved him, and it would have been a denial of it all bad she reniged at the end. And she bad watched him go into the labyrinth, and condemned herself for her idealistic folly.

    "If ever I see him again alive," she had sworn to herself as she stood chained and helpless, "I shall clasp him to me and tell him I love him." But it had been the abandoned conviction of desperation.

    Yet it had happened.

    And somehow, from that moment, she had ceased to understand him. She was woman now, ready and able to accept him as man, and the proof had been made. Still he treated her as child. Why-when they had already made spectacular love? Why did he withdraw when she approached? Why had he stayed two years, retaining his bracelet, and come for-her arid taken her-only to Ignore her offerings now?

    She had gone along, powerless to change the situation.

    And gradually she discovered that she had changed, not he-and that he did not realize this. Not quite. Vat was naive~ He had begun his journey with a child, and in his mind he still traveled with a child. Apparently he did not comprehend what had happened on New Crete. In his eye, she would always be child.

    Then, just as she was adjusting to that situation, a raiding party had caught her unaware and brought her here. At first she thought Var was dead; then she learned that he had arranged it. Her fury had lasted for weeks.

    Until it occurred to her that she could emerge from this inane purgatory a woman-in his estimation. He wanted her here so that he could officially accept the transition that had already taken place. So that he could present her his bracelet honorably.

    That changed her attitude. She discovered that there was a good education to be had here. The matrons were rigorous but sincere, and they knew a great deal of value. Soli perfected her reading ability in the symbols of this continent and mastered other disciplines she had hardly been aware existed. Most important, she became adept at female artistries that would twist and remold the impetus of almost any male. This, indeed, was as intricate a combat as any with weapons, and as potentially rewarding.