The Chalice of Death (34 page)

Earth.

Ewing knew what his next task was. Moving quickly, now that circulation was returning to his thawed limbs, he strode to the compact bulk of the subetheric generator on the opposite wall and spun the contact dial. A blue light glowed.

“Baird Ewing speaking,” he said to the pickup grid. “I wish to report that I've taken up a position in orbit around Earth after a successful flight. All's well so far. I'll be descending to Earth shortly. Further reports will follow.”

He broke contact. This very moment, he knew, his words were leaping across the galaxy toward his home world, via subetheric carrier wave. Fifteen days would elapse before his message arrived on Corwin.

Ewing had wanted to stay awake, all the long months of his solitary trip. There was reading he wanted to do, and music disks to play. The idea of spending nearly a year asleep was appalling to him; all that time wasted!

But they had been adamant. “You're crossing sixteen parsecs of space in a one-man ship,” they told him. “Nobody can stay awake all that time and come out of it sane, Ewing. And we need you sane.”

He tried to protest. It was no good. The people of Corwin were sending him to Earth at great expense to do a job of vital importance; unless they could be absolutely certain that he would arrive in good condition, they would do better sending someone else. Reluctantly, Ewing yielded. They lowered him into the nutrient bath and showed him how to trip the foot levers that brought about suspension and the hand levers that would release him when his time was up. They sealed off his ship and shot it into the dark, a lonely raft on the broad sea, a coffin-sized spaceship built for one.…

At least ten minutes went by before he was fully restored to normal physiological functioning. He stared in the mirror at the strange silken stubble that had sprouted on his face. He looked oddly emaciated; he had never been a fleshy man, but now he looked skeletohic, his cheeks shrunken, his skin tight—drawn over the jutting bones of his face. His hair seemed to have faded too; it had been a rich auburn on that day in 3805 when he left Corwin on his emergency mission to Earth, but now it was a dark, nondescript mud-brown. Ewing was a big man, long-muscled rather than stocky, with a fierce expression contradicted by mild, questioning eyes.

His stomach felt hollow. His shanks were spindly. He felt drained of vigor.

But there was a job to do.

Adjoining the subetheric generator was an in-system communicator. He switched it on, staring at the pale ball that was Earth in the screen on the far wall. A crackle of static rewarded him. He held his breath, waiting, waiting for the first words he would have heard in pure Terrestrial. He wondered if they would understand his Anglo-Corwin.

After all, it was nearly a thousand years since the colony had been planted, and almost five hundred since the people of Corwin had last had intercourse of any kind with Earth. Languages diverge, in five hundred years.

A voice said, “Earth station Double Prime. Who calls, please? Speak up. Speak, please.”

Ewing smiled. It was intelligible!

He said, “One-man ship out of the Free World of Corwin calling. I'm a stabilized orbit fifty thousand kilometers above Earth ground level. Request permission to land at coordinates of your designation.”

There was a long silence, too long to be attributed sheerly to transmission lag. Ewing wondered if he had spoken too quickly, or if his words had lost their Terrestrial meanings.

Finally came a response: “Free World of
which
, did you say?”

“Corwin. Epsilon Ursae Majoris XII. It's a former Terrestrial colony.”

Again there was an uncomfortable pause. “Corwin … Corwin. Oh. I guess it's okay for you to land. You have a warp-drive ship?”

“Yes,” Ewing said. “With photonic modifiers, of course. And ion-beam for atmospheric passage.”

His Earthside respondent said, “Are photonic modifiers radioactive?”

Ewing was taken aback for a moment. Frowning at the speaker grid, he said, “If you mean radioactive in the normal sense of emitting hard particles, no. The photonic modifier merely converts—” He stopped. “Do I have to explain the whole thing to you?”

“Not unless you want to stay up there all day, Corwin. If your ship's not hot, come on down. Coordinates for landing will follow.”

Ewing carefully jotted the figures down as they came in, read them back for confirmation, thanked the Earthman, and signed off. He integrated the figures and programmed them for the ship's calculators.

His throat felt dry. Something about the Earthman's tone of voice troubled him. The man had been too flip, careless of mind, impatient.

Perhaps I was expecting too much
, Ewing thought.
After all, he was just doing a routine job
.

It was a jarring beginning, nonetheless. Ewing realized he, like the Corwinites, had a highly idealized mental image of an Earthman as a being compassionately wise, physically superb, a superman in all respects. It would be disappointing to learn that the fabled inhabitants of the legendary mother world were mere human beings themselves, like their remote descendants on the colony worlds.

Ewing strapped himself in for the downward jaunt through the atmospheric blanket of Earth and nudged the lever that controlled the autopilot. The ultimate leg of his journey had begun. Within an hour, he would actually stand on the soil of Earth herself.

I hope they'll be able to help us
, he thought. Bright in his mind was a vivid mental image: faceless hordes of barbaric Klodni sweeping down on the galaxy out of Andromeda, devouring world after world in their relentless drive inward toward civilization's heart.

Already four worlds had fallen to the Klodni since the aliens had begun their campaign of conquest. The timetable said they would reach Corwin within the next decade.

Cities destroyed, women and children carried into slavery, the glittering spire of the World Building a charred ruin, the University destroyed, the fertile fields blackened by the Klodni scorched-earth tactics—

Ewing shuddered as his tiny ship spiraled Earthward, bobbing in the thickening layers of atmosphere.
Earth will help us
, he told himself comfortingly,
Earth will save her colonies from conquest
.

Ewing felt capillaries bursting under the increasing drag of deceleration. He gripped the handrests and shouted to relieve the tension on his eardrums, but there was no way of relieving the tension within. The thunder of his jets boomed through the framework of the ship, and the green planet grew frighteningly huge in the clear plastic of the view-screen.…

Minutes later, the ship came to rest on a broad ferroconcrete landing apron; it hung poised a moment on its own jet-wash, then settled gently to earth. With gravity-heavy fingers Ewing unfastened himself. Through the vision-screen he saw small beetle-like autotrucks come rumbling over the field toward his ship. The decontamination squad, no doubt; robot-manned of course.

He waited until they had done their job, then sprung the hatch on his ship and climbed out. The air smelled good—strange, since his home had a twenty-three percent oxygen content, two parts in a hundred richer than Earth's—and the day was warm. Ewing spied the vaulting sweep of a terminal building, and headed toward it.

A robot, blocky and faceless, scanned him with photo-beams as he passed through the swinging doors. Within, the terminal was a maze of blinking lights, red-green, on-off, up-down. Momentarily, Ewing was dazed.

Beings of all kinds thronged the building. Ewing saw four semi-humanoid forms with bulbous heads engaged in a busy discussion near where he stood. Further in the distance swarms of more Terrestrial beings moved about. Ewing was startled by their appearance.

Some were “normal”—oddly muscular and rugged-looking, but not so much that they would cause any surprised comment on Corwin. But the others!

Dressed flamboyantly in shimmering robes of turquoise and black, gray and gold, they presented a weird sight. One had no ears; his skull was bare, decorated only by jeweled pendants that seemed to be riveted to the flesh of his scalp. Another had one leg and supported himself by a luminous crutch. A third wore gleaming emeralds on a golden nose ring.

No two of them seemed to look alike. As a trained student of cultural patterns, Ewing was aware of the cause of the phenomenon; overelaboration of decoration was a common evolution for highly advanced societies, such as Earth's. But it made him feel terribly provincial to see the gaudy display. Corwin was a new world, even after a thousand years of colonization; such fancies were yet to take root there.

Hesitantly, he approached the group of dandified Terrestrials nearest him. They were chattering in artificial-sounding, high-pitched voices.

“Pardon,” Ewing said. “I've just arrived from the Free World of Corwin. Is there some place where I can register with the authorities?”

The conversation ceased as if cut off with an ax. The trio whirled, facing Ewing. “You be from a colony world?” asked the uniped, in barely intelligible accents.

Ewing nodded. “Corwin. Sixteen parsecs away. We were settled by Earth a thousand years ago.”

They exchanged words at a speed that made comprehension impossible; it seemed like a private language, some made-up doubletalk. Ewing watched the rouged faces, feeling distaste.

“Where can I register with the authorities?” he asked again, a little stiffly.

The earless one giggled shrilly. “What authorities? This is Earth, friend! We come and go as we please.”

A sense of uneasiness grew in Ewing. He disliked these Terrestrials almost upon sight, after just a moment's contact.

A new voice, strange, harshly accented, said, “Did I hear you say you were from a colony?”

Ewing turned. One of the “normal” Terrestrials was speaking to him—a man about five-feet-eight with a thick, squarish face, beetling brows looming over dark smoldering eyes, and a cropped, bullet shaped head. His voice was dull and ugly sounding.

“I'm from Corwin,” Ewing said.

The other frowned, screwing up his massive brows. He said, “Where's that?”

“Sixteen parsecs. Epsilon Ursae Majoris XII. Earth colony.”

“And what are you doing on Earth?”

The belligerent tone annoyed Ewing. The Corwinite said, in a bleak voice, “I'm an officially accredited ambassador from my world to the government of Earth. I'm looking for the customs authority.”

“There are none,” the squat man said. “The Earthers did away with them about a century back. Couldn't be bothered with them, they said.” He grinned in cheerful contempt at the three dandies, who had moved further away and were murmuring busily to each other in their private language. “The Earthers can't hardly be bothered with anything.”

Ewing was puzzled. “Aren't you from Earth yourself? I mean—”

“Me?” The deep chest emitted a rumbling, sardonic chuckle. “You folk really
are
isolated, aren't you? I'm a Sirian. Sirius IV—oldest Terrestrial colony there is. Suppose we get a drink. I want to talk to you.”

Chapter Two

Somewhat unwillingly, Ewing followed the burly Sirian through the thronged terminal toward a refreshment room at the far side of the arcade. As soon as they were seated at a gleaming translucent table, the Sirian stared levelly at Ewing and said, “First things come first. What's your name?”

“Baird Ewing. You?”

“Rollun Firnik. What brings you to Earth, Ewing?”

Firnik's manner was offensively blunt. Ewing toyed with the golden-amber drink the Sirian had bought for him, sipped it idly, put it down. “I told you,” he said quietly. “I'm an ambassador from the government of Corwin to the government of Earth. It's as simple as that.”

“It is? When did you people last have any contact with the rest of the galaxy?”

“Five hundred years ago. But—”

“Five hundred years,” Firnik repeated speculatively. “And now you decide to reopen contact with Earth.” He squinted at Ewing, chin resting on balled fist. “Just like that. Poof! Enter one ambassador. It isn't just out of sociability, is it, Ewing? What's the reason behind your visit?”

“I'm not familiar with the latest news in this sector of the galaxy,” Ewing said. “Have you heard any mention of the Klodni?”

“Klodni?” the Sirian repeated. “No. The name doesn't mean a thing to me. Should it?”

“News travels slowly through the galaxy,” Ewing said. “The Klodni are a humanoid race that evolved somewhere in the Andromeda star cluster. I've seen solidographs of them. They're little greasy creatures, about five feet high, with a sort of ant-like civilization. A war-fleet of Klodni is on the move.”

Firnik rolled an eyebrow upward. He said nothing.

“A couple thousand Klodni ships entered our galaxy about four years ago. They landed on Barnholt—that's a colony world about a hundred fifty light-years deeper in space than we are—and wiped the place clean. After about a year they picked up and moved on. They've been to four planets so far, and no one's been able to stop them yet. They swarm over a planet and destroy everything they see, then go on to the next world.”

“What of it?”

“We've plotted their probable course. They're going to attack Corwin in ten years or so, give or take one year either way. We know we can't fight them back, either. We just aren't a militarized people. And we can't militarize in less than ten years and hope to win.” Ewing paused, sipped at his drink. It was surprisingly mild, he thought.

He went on: “As soon as the nature of the Klodni menace became known, we radioed a message to Earth explaining the situation and asking for help. We got no answer, even figuring in the subetheric lag. We radioed again. Still no reply from Earth.”

“So you decided to send an ambassador,” Firnik said. “Figuring your messages must have gone astray, no doubt. You wanted to negotiate for help at first hand.”