The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

Mark was perfectly willing to let the thing alone. It looked as if it weighed as much as he did. Its broad feet and small claws gave it a better footing than hobnails would give a man. It circled them warily at a distance of three meters. Mark turned carefully to keep facing it. He held the spear aimed at its throat. “I told you to get out of here,” Mark said.

“Sure. There’s usually two of those things.” She spoke very softly. “I’m scared to blow this trumpet again. Wish Curt would get here with his gun.” As she spoke, they heard gunshots. They sounded very far away.

“Mark,” Juanita whispered urgently. “There is another one. I’m getting back to back with you.”

“All right.” He didn’t dare look away from the beast in front of him. What did it want? It moved slowly toward him, halting just beyond the thrusting range of the spear. Then it dashed forward, screaming a sound that could never have come from an Earthly pig.

Mark jabbed at it with his spear. It flinched from the point and ran past. Mark turned to follow it and saw the other beast advancing on Juanita. She had slipped in the mud and was down, trying frantically to get to her feet, and the porker was running toward her.

Mark gave an animal scream of pure fury. He slid in the mud but kept his feet and charged forward, screaming again as he stabbed with his spear and felt it slip into the thick hide. The porker shoved against him, and Mark fell into the mud. He desperately held the spear, but the beast walked steadily forward. The point went through the hide on the back, and came out again, the shaft sliding between skin and meat, and the impaled animal advancing inexorably up the shaft. The tusks neared his manhood. Mark heard himself whimpering in fear. “I can’t hold him!” he shouted. “Run!”

She didn’t run. She got to her feet and shoved her spear down the snarling throat, then thrust forward, forcing the head toward the mud. Mark scrambled to his feet. He looked wildly around for the other animal. It was nowhere in sight, but the pinned porker snarled horribly.

“Mark, honey, take that spear of yours out of him while I hold him,” Juanita shouted. “I can’t hold long—quick, now.”

Mark shook himself out of the trembling fear that paralyzed him. The tusks were moving wickedly. They were nowhere near him, but he could still feel them tearing at his groin.

“Please, honey,” Juanita said.

He tugged at the spear, but it wouldn’t come free, so he thrust it forward, then ran behind the animal to pull the spear through the loose skin on the porker’s back. The shaft came through bloody. His hands slipped but he held the spear and thrust it into the animal, thrust again and again, stabbing in insane fury and shouting, “Die, die, die!”

* * *

Morgan didn’t come for another half an hour. When he galloped up, they were standing with their arms around each other. Juanita moved slowly away from Mark when Morgan dismounted, but she looked possessively at him.

“That way now?” Morgan asked.

She didn’t answer.

“There was a herd of those things in the next field over,” Curt said. His voice was apologetic. “Killed three men and a woman. I came as quick as I could.”

“Mark killed this one.”

“She did. It would have had me—”

“Hold on,” Curt said.

“It walked right up the spear,” Mark said.

“I’ve seen ’em do that, all right.” Morgan seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. “You two will have to stay on here for awhile. We’ve lost four hands, and—”

“We’ll be all right,” Juanita said.

“Yeah.” Morgan went back to his mount. “Yeah, I guess you will.” He rode off quickly.

Tradition gave Mark and Juanita the carcass, and they feasted with their friends that night. Afterwards Mark and Juanita walked away from the barracks area, and they were gone for a long time.

* * *

“Taps, what the hell am I going to do?” Mark demanded. They were outside, in the unexpected cool of a late summer evening. Mark had thought he would never be cool again; now it was almost harvest time. The fall and winter would be short, but Tanith was almost comfortable during those months.

“What is the problem?”

“She’s pregnant.”

“Hardly surprising. Nor the end of the world. There are many ways to—”

“No. She won’t even talk about it. Says it’s murder. It’s that damned padre. Goddamn church, no wonder they bring that joker around. Makes the slaves contented.”

“This is hardly the only activity of the church, but it does have that effect. Well, what is it to you? As you have often pointed out, you have no responsibilities. And certainly you have no legal obligations in this case.”

“That’s my kid! And she’s my—I mean, damn it, I can’t just—”

Tappinger smiled grimly. “I remind you that conscience and a sense of ethics are expensive luxuries. But if you are determined to burden yourself with them, let us review your alternatives.

“You can ask Ewigfeuer for permission to marry her. It is likely to be granted. The new governor has ended the mandatory so-called apprenticeship for children born to convicts after next year. Your sentence is not all that long. When it ends, you will be free—”

“To do what? I saw the time-expired men in Whiskeytown.”

“There are jobs. There is a whole planetary economy to be built.”

“Yeah. Sure. Sweat my balls off for some storekeeper. Or work like Curt Morgan, sweating cons.”

Tappinger shrugged. “There are alternatives. Civil service. Or learn the business yourself and become a planter. There is always financing available for those who can produce.”

“I’d still be a slaver. I want out of the system. Out of the whole damned thing!”

Tappinger sighed and lifted the bottle to drink. He paused to say, “There are many things we all want. So what?” Then he drained the pint.

“There’s another way,” Mark said. “A way out of all this.”

Tappinger looked up quickly. “Don’t even think it! Mark, the Free State you believe in is no more than a dream. The reality is much less, no more than a gang of lawless men who live like animals off what they can steal. Lawless. Men cannot live without laws.”

I can damned well live without the kind of laws they have here, Mark thought. And of course they steal. Why shouldn’t they? How else can they live?

“And it is unlikely to last in any event. The governor has brought in a regiment of mercenaries to deal with the Free State.”

About what I’d expect, Mark thought. “Why not CD Marines?”

Tappinger shook his head. “A complex issue. The simplest answer is financial. There are not enough CD forces to keep the peace everywhere because the Grand Senate will not appropriate enough money.”

“But you said Tanith drug profits go to the Navy—”

“In large part they do. And since that is a lot of money, do you not think others want some of it? The Grand Senate itself envies the Navy’s share, for it is money the Senate doesn’t control. The Senate sends the Navy anywhere but Tanith, so the planters are squeezed again, to pay for their protection.”

And that’s fine with me, Mark thought. “Mercenaries can’t be much use. They’d rather lie around in barracks and collect their pay.” His teachers had told him that.

“Have you ever known any?”

“No, of course not. Look, Taps, I’m tired. I think I better get to bed.” He turned and left the old man. To hell with him, Mark thought. Old man, old woman, that’s what he is. Not enough guts to get away from here and strike out on his own.

Well, that’s fine for him. But I’ve got bigger things in mind.

* * *

The harvest began at the end of the hurricane season. The borshite pods formed and were cut, and the sticky sap collected. The sap was boiled, skimmed, boiled again until it was reduced to a tiny fraction of the bulky plants they had worked all summer to guard.

And Ewigfeuer collapsed on the steps of the big house. Morgan flew him to the Lederle hospital. Curt returned with a young man: Ewigfeuer’s son, on leave from his administrative post in the city.

“That old bastard wants to see you outside,” Lewis said.

Mark sighed. He was tired from a long day in the fields. He was also tired of Tappinger’s eternal lectures on the horrors of the Free State. Still, the man was his only friend. Mark took his bottle and went outside.

Tappinger seized the bottle eagerly. He downed several swallows. His hands shook. “Come with me,” he whispered.

Mark followed in confusion. Taps led the way to the shadows near the big house. Juanita was there.