“You defy us to dig you out of your city. Why should we trouble to? Can the orcs eat stone. Where are your cattle? Who guards your grain fields now that the Northmen fly abroad in the sky? Your horses swell and stink in their paddocks since our sky chariot visited them; they feed the worms. Will you eat your slaves then? They won’t last long. Then you will have to eat each other.
“Listen to the star man, orc. He is a rare one, a man who does not want to see the orcs all dead.”
The orc shouted back, his voice hoarse, defiant. “Then why does a Northman speak for him? If the Northmen can starve us out, then why do you, a Northman, want to let us leave freely and unmolested? Because you’re afraid of us after all! We are still the orcs, mighty and great in numbers!”
“Afraid of you after all what? After all your defeats?” Nils’s voice was bored now. “No, there is nothing there to fear. We’ll be rid of you one way or another, and the Northmen owe the star men a favor. So the captain of the star men has claimed the right to save your lives if you will depart and leave your slaves behind.”
“How do we know you won’t fly down and attack us on our ships?”
“You have only our oath; you take a chance. But if you stay, you face a certainty: cannibalism, starvation, and death.”
The orc stood sullenly, both aides talking to him at once. He snarled and they backed away; then he looked up at the pinnace again and shouted in Anglic:
“Kazi said it to our fathers! ‘This will be the place of the orcs as long as the tower shall stand!’ The Master’s spirit will strengthen and save us! He is undying!”
At that moment Ram knew what to do. Siren shrieking, he twice swung Beta around the tower as he lifted away. As he rose even with its top, he cut off the siren and answered Dov the Silent, the commast speaker on full volume now. The words rolled like small thunder over the palace.
“AS LONG AS THE TOWER SHALL STAND? THEN THE TOWER WILL FALL!”
The night was clear and moonless, with a chill breeze. Mikhail Ciano led the task force—men in asbestos suits and oxygen masks. Orcs shivering on roof tops stared fearfully at the grotesque forms at the base of the tower, at the beams of laser drills and the glow of molten rock. The snorkel worked ceaselessly at handling the heat that built up within the shield. At intervals, when the build-up became excessive, the shield was switched off for a moment to let the night wind blow the heat away. Finally the glow died, and shortly the shield switched off again. There was a series of small explosions as coolant was jetted into bore holes; then the shield was reactivated and all was quiet. At last the pinnace lifted and disappeared into the night sky.
Nothing happened. The soldiers, who had watched almost without speaking, began talking softly among themselves, and a few started leaving the roofs. Abruptly a stupendous roar shook the night as great gouts of flame shot from the base of the tower. Its dim bulk seemed to lean, did lean, like a colossal tree whose roots had rotted, fell with a stupefying shock of sound across the roof gardens, caving in whole sections of the palace, and rumbled into the square below.
The death of its echoes left silence and deafness for long seconds, while orcs rose first to knees and elbows, then trembling to their feet on nearby roofs. A single voice began to wail, was joined by another, growing to a chorus that thickened the night.
XXX
But if on Earth mankind had died,
Satan lived there still,
Like Onan cast his seed beside that sea
as dragon’s teeth, and up there sprang orcs.
Nursed on battered breasts to monsters grew,
their arrogance, swollen with sadism, sustained by screams, restored through massacre.
In such a universe how can I live?
And yet unhumaned do not die, memories like maggots crawling through my damaged brain.