“Yeah,” I added from flat on the back of my lap, some confidence beginning to return at the prospect of having such an ally to protect me from the little blond, “The customer is always right. Can I get up now?”
I had deserved that second knockdown, a white-belted boot knows better—
“Give us your parole, first!” Lucille had not relaxed from her combative stance, not by a fraction of a millimeter. She still stood over me, tense-muscled, breathing hard with meanness, rather than exertion.
I could match it if I had to: “What the hell good would that do? You do not know me. Maybe I lie a lot.” I was starting to get mad, all right—about a month’s worth of mad, or maybe a lifetime’s. “You tell me what is going on, Goldilocks, then maybe I will give you my parole.”
Perhaps. If she was lucky.
A gentle breeze stirred the trees around the clearing, lifting Lucille’s hair softly. Her cheeks were flushed, tiny dampish curls stuck to the smooth curve of her forehead. The girl was absolutely beautiful.
Terrifying, but beautiful.
“Goldilocks, is it? Well, buddy-boy, what’s going on is a long, complicated—”
“You are not from Sca!” I interrupted suddenly. Here accent was different, more like mine. There was not a mark or a blemish on her gorgeous face. “Nor from Vespucci, which means that there must be a third—”
“Slow down, son.” Coup loomed tall as an airport con-tower over Lucille. “Let’s start with polite introductions—preferably vertical ones!” He leaned down, took my hand, lifted me to my feet like a child.
“Whitey O’Thraight,” I answered the big man reflexively, giving it the official pronunciation, “Armorer-Corporal, Vespuccian Naval Reserve.”
All at once I realized I was standing at attention without benefit of any command to do so. “Coup” affected people that way. Also without benefit of my uniform or any other clothing at all. Oh well, the rank designations tattooed on my arms should be enough uniform for any real Vespuccian.
“There’s a formula we’ve heard before,” Lucille observed to our companion, “Name, function, rank. Buddy-boy, the only thing you left out was your serial number. Haven’t been reinvented where you come from?”
She added, “—And are you ever going to get dressed?”
Lucille appealed to me. Embarrassingly enough, I was beginning to show it. Two long months in space, another month—or an eternity in prison—if that is any excuse. Hastening to the river-bank where I had left my remaining clothes, I called back over my bare shoulder, “Do you people never ask one question at a time? That
was
my serial number.”
“What?” Lucille and Coup said it together.
“Whitey O’Thraight; YD-038. Five digits. Almost a real name.”
It
was
something to be proud of, after all.
Lucille whitened, muttered in a grim, low voice, “Sweet Lysander Spooner’s baby buggy bumpers, what kind of a sick, twisted, rotten culture—”
“Not in front of company, Cilly.”
“
Don’t call me Cilly!”
The big man laughed hugely, patted Lucille on the head, tousling her hair. “Corporal O’Thraight, I’m Geoff Couper, and this impolitic and violent young female has already introduced herself, I believe. I take no responsibility—nor does anybody else, including herse—
Whoops!”
As good as Lucille was, Couper was blindingly better, casually blocking her intended sidekick to the belly with an iron forearm, then seizing her extended foot. He held it for a moment as if contemplating twisting it off, then released her with a little push so suddenly that she had to hop for balance. Tension, half a second’s pause, then they laughed. It was like watching a pair of giant mountain predators at play.
Self-consciously, I gathered up the tatters of my uniform, along with what little of my dignity was left. I put the pants on, then the jacket, both wet. While Couper continued sparring with Lucille on a verbal level, I hesitated with the robe they had given me, folding it over my arm. Then, changing my mind, I sought privacy behind a bush, for some reason of irrational modesty. I removed the sodden clothing again.
This was my first real chance to examine the hooded garment. The outer shell was about right for what one might laughingly call the technology of Sca, but it was a deception. I should have noticed it at once. That rough-woven fabric next to my much-abused skin would have hurt. But the robe was lined with the same odd material that was still wrapped around my game leg. Except the silvery-gray stuff was buffed up into a velvety nap, the surface noticeably warmer than the night air.
The front edge of the robe slipped between my exploring fingers. I felt a cylindrical lump sewn into the hem. Examining it, I squeezed an end. Instantly the lining cooled to the touch. Dew began to condense, running off in tiny diamond droplets. Frost started to form. It took several tries, twisting, pinching, before the lining began to dry again.
Who were these people, anyway?
-2-
“Who are you people, anyway?” I demanded as I emerged from the semi-privacy of my dressing shrub, uniform draped over my robe-covered arm.
“There you are, Corporal,” Couper was massaging the leg of one of the draft animals, “For a moment there, I thought you’d decided to go AWOL on us. I guess we didn’t finish the introductions after all, did we?”
Lucille was not in sight.
Couper turned to the last of his traveling companions, a portly, gnomish individual, robe open and hood thrown back. He had a broad face, featuring black bushy sideburns that merged at the bottom of his chin.
Couper put his big hands on our shoulders, “Corporal, say hello to Owen Rogers, our weapons tech. Rog, this is Armorer-Corporal Whitey O’Thraight.”
Rogers raised a skeptical eyebrow at my title, as if he had just been introduced to a genuine flint-knapping savage. He nodded civilly enough, then went back to tinkering with one of the group’s incredibly small, impressively potent handweapons. This had wiped out a hundred cavalry? I opened my mouth to speak, but Couper went right on without me.
“I suppose that I ought to add that Owen is also our expedition praxeologist,” he observed, “A very busy citizen indeed, our Mr. Rogers.”
“Don’t call me a citizen, Coup,” Rogers replied in a voice higher, more nasal, than I had expected, “I’m too tired to undertake a duel tonight.”
Rogers took a stiff paper packet from his robe, extracting what appeared to be thin brown twig. With his thumb, he flicked a small mechanical fire-starter, placed the twig in his mouth, lit the end, drew smoke, puffing it out again. He peered critically at a part he had removed from the weapon, polished it on his robe, peered at it again.
I asked for lack of a better topic, “What is a ‘praxeologist’?” Lucille was still among the missing. “More importantly, who in Hamilton’s Holy Name are you people? What kind of ‘expedition’ is this?”
Both men stiffened slightly, as if at something I had said.
“We might ask the same of you, buddy-boy—omitting the damned obscenity.”
I whirled. Lucille was right behind me, having come from another section of the little brook. Her wet hair was plastered down, bunched together into a knot at the back of her neck. Even that way she looked good.
“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” she said, “Tell us something we want to, we’ll tell you something you want to know—maybe.”
I was just about to ask what obscenity, when the Lieutenant began stirring on the cart. He groaned, babbled a few words, tried to sit up against his good arm. Couper hurried over to him, gently pushed him down again, while continuing to address me as he examined my ailing officer.
“Corporal, where we come from, there was once a primitive people who had time and distance somewhat confused in their cosmology.” He glanced over at Rogers. The praxeologist/gunsmith nodded professional confirmation. “You see, they figured that, if you came from far away, then you also came from the distant past. A decidedly odd point of view—”
“Which has its merits,” Rogers interrupted, looking up from his work.
“In this instance, perhaps,” acknowledged Couper.
He peeled the burlap from the Lieutenant’s arm. Underneath was the same rubbery gray dressing I wore. Set into the resilient substance was a small rigid panel of the same color, two centimeters by five, decorated with tiny lights, miniature switches. One by one, as Couper labored over my friend, the little lamps blinked from red to yellow to green.
He returned his attention to me: “Where you come from, Corporal, there will be legends. Stories of a beginning, or an arrival.” It was a statement, not a question. He gave me an evaluative squint that seemed to broadcast, even at its friendliest, that he was not a man to lie to. “There always are. Have you ever heard of a place called ‘Earth’?”
“‘Earth’?” I rolled the unlikely syllable around in my mouth. “Why would anybody name their world ‘dirt’? Is that where you people are from?”
Couper went back to the electronic panel on the Lieutenant’s dressing. Rogers smiled, but it did not disguise a worried look that had accompanied his transformation from artisan to professional—what?
Praxeologist.
“In a manner of speaking, Whitey. Tell me, now, is this Vespucci of yours a city-state, a nation-state, a planet, a planetary system, or —”
“All four by now, most likely. What do you mean by, ‘in a manner of speaking’? I would think that you are either from a planet, or you are—”
“Is that so, Corporal?” Lucille sat on the—what do you call it?—the part of the wagon that is connected with the pulling animals, helping Rogers now to tend the weapons with a sort of absent-minded contentedness that I have seen other women reserve for knitting. I looked down at the ground, suddenly self-conscious, for a variety of reasons.
“What if,” she began, then stopped. “Okay, say a child had been born aboard your ship while you were in transit to this mindforsaken place?”
“He would be a Vespuccian, er ... citizen.” I glanced at Rogers briefly, wondering if the word still offended him. She answered for him.
“I see. Rog, hand me that orifice gauge, will you” This thing sprayed a little light against the cavalry out there, after I stopped it down for the torture-master. Must be some play in the control ring.”
She might have returned to her work without further comment, but I spoke again. “I meant to ask about that. You did not have my reasons for hating the Bailiff. I realize he was about to shout for help, but why—”
“Constitution! I’d planned to fry the scum whether he made a peep or not!” Lucille answered cheerfully, tightening some adjustment at her weapon’s muzzle-end, “That’s standard policy with us—for his kind.”
I must have goggled.
Rogers stepped in: “Lucille’s standard policy, she means. Still, there’s something to be said for that, too. It’s a reliable method of measuring how civilized an individual—or an entire planet—really is. Savage cultures encourage torturers. Merely barbaric ones tolerate them, sometimes torture them back in revenge. While a truly advanced culture—”
“Attempts to rehabilitate them?” I asked, beginning to feel that possibly I understood this fellow. The Vespuccian educational system warns everybody against the few like him at home, overrationalizing, sentimental—
“Just another word for torture,” Rogers replied evenly, jerking my assessment of him out from under me, “Or a subtle variation on it. No, we kill them, as Lucille says, like any other vermin, swiftly and humanely. And it’s also lots cheaper than rehabilitation or any other alternative.”
“A plasma-gun under the armpit,” Lucille added before I could readjust, “simply does wonders for the local rate of cultural advancement.”
Rogers chuckled, “Not to mention underarm odor!”
Suppressing a grin of his own, Couper grunted, wrapped the burlap back around the sleeping Lieutenant’s real bandage, fiddling with the temperature-adjusting lump at the edge of the unconscious officer’s robe.
“Corporal, if I let this conversation go any further without ... ” He stopped, started up again: “Son, bloodthirsty comments to one side, we’re basically a scientific exploration team, assigned to study this garbage-dump of a planet. Other questions—and answers, do I make myself clear, Lucille?—had better wait until we get where we’re going.”
Lucille stuck her tongue out but remained silent.
“Which is where, scientifically speaking?” As I watched, the girl reholstered her weapon somewhere underneath her robe. Rogers began putting his gunsmithing tools away in a fabric roll, took the feed-bags from the animals’ faces, tossed them into the cart beside the Lieutenant.
“That, Corporal, is a pretty good example of a question that’ll have to wait,” Couper replied, “Anyway, doing something is better than just being told about it. Saddle up, scientists, we’ve got miles to make!”
-3-
Thus it was back to the same plodding journey as before.
Only this time, there were certain differences.
I sat up on the end of the wagon, having had the little control panel on my own dressing examined, the burlap cover drawn back over it. All of my lights had been green. Except for the negligible weight of the thing—the burlap on the outside weighed more—plus an occasional surprising deep healing twinge, my broken foot felt good as new. The—Earthians?—did nothing to discourage me from walking on it.