THE CRUCIBLE OF TIME BY JOHN BRUNNER

But that was irrelevant. Hastening down the old familiar path, he headed for the crowd—and was brought up short, so that he clutched his sole weapon, the broken prong, and spun around with a hiss of terror. He had abruptly caught a waft of death, and there were overtones to it that he recognized.

Beside the path, clearly having collapsed as he moved away from the town, leaking his stale ichor on the ground after a major rupture of a lower tubule … Ninthag.

He who had been the town’s elder for so long, its guide and counselor: left here to rot unheeded! Had he been stabbed? But a quick tactile check confirmed that he had simply died from stress. Well, that was a relief, of a sort—but still an insult!

Tenthag drew himself together and put on the best imitation he could contrive of his father’s appearance. Maintaining it, while imitating an old’un’s hobble, he let himself show in the circle of brightness shed by the town-center lights.

It was Sprapter who first noticed him, accepting a shell of araq. He was so startled that he tilted it and cursed as the biting liquid spilled down his torso. Before he could speak, while others were still turning to gaze at him, Tenthag said loudly enough to be heard by everyone, “Have they shown you a female with a bud?”

Fifthorch, offering more araq to another of the People of the Sea, started so violently he almost slumped, and Tenthag, still posing as his father, padded towards him. In a thin voice he repeated, “A female with a bud—have they shown you one?”

“Drive him off!” Sprapter cried, struggling to full height.

“Why?” Tenthag countered. “You have the secret of fertility, or so your banners claim! That means you must have buds and young’uns in your fleet!”

“Of course they have the secret!” Fifthorch shouted, while the hunger-sluggish minds of those around him registered what Tenthag was saying. “They’ve sold it to us, and on fair terms, what’s more!”

“But have they shown a single young’un, or a she’un budding?” Tenthag abandoned his disguise and strode to take station at Sprapter’s side, his prong leveled. “I say they haven’t even met the southern fleets which raided Ognorit, but stole everything you could offer in the hope that when they do they’ll get the secret! Truth, Sprapter—tell the truth!

And for every lie I’ll let the pressure out of one of your tubules!” He jabbed the commander’s torso, just enough.

Terrified, Sprapter babbled, “I swear we would have kept our bargain! We needed to buy the secret and we’d have come back and—”

“You mean you didn’t give it to us?” Fifthorch said, belatedly reacting to the commander’s reek of guilt and shame.

Without compunction Tenthag slit a minor tubule in the trickster’s torso, forcing him to fold over and compress the leak until it sealed.

“I don’t know what they clawed off you,” he said mildly, “but as I tried to tell you earlier, I was at Ognorit, and learned from Gveest himself what must be done. On the briq where I was captive, I met a she’un who was ripe for budding, and she had no bud. I saw not a single bud or young’un in this fleet that claims to sell the secret! What do you make of that, you fools who left Ninthag to leak away his life on that path yonder? Who’d have the secret merely to sell to others, without using it to benefit themselves?”

A pulsation later he was frightened by the forces he had loosed, for Fifthorch roared with mindless rage and launched himself at Sprapter. Before the two could be separated the commander was as dead as Ninthag, and the air was foul with the stench of drying ichor and loud with screams of pain.

But within moments the seafolk were cowering to the ground, emitting the odor of surrender, and finding themselves about to slash or stab with whatever weapon came to claw, the Neesans recovered enough of their normal awareness to realize what they had done, and be horrified at it. Weak, but calm, they began to mutter among themselves that Tenthag had been right, and they were stupid not to have insisted on being shown a budded she’un before parting with their goods.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *