Var the Stick (21 page)

    Had Var and Soli not been apt at self-defense, they would not have lived very long.

    They followed the river Amur inland, not from any love of the water but because it showed the best route through the formidable mountain ranges. When it veered northwest, they shifted to a large tributary. Months passed and they came at last to the fringe of the actual Chinese territories. The Chinese influence, like that of the crazies in America, extended through the entire region, perhaps all the continent; but their written language unified the diverse peoples in a subtle but comprehensive way. Var, having learned the very real constraints upon the seemingly free nomad society, was sure that similar factors operated here.

    Similar in principle, if not in detail. There must, indeed, be a Chinese Helicon.

    Yet as they neared their supposed destination, their camaraderie became more strained. Soli was filling out, and Var was too well aware of this. Sometimes be touched his bracelet, thinking of offering it to her-but this always reminded him of what had happened when he first took his manhood. Girls of band-borrowing age did not appreciate ugly men, and Var knew himself to be grotesque.

    And she was beautiful. Perhaps in the flower of her maidenhood her mother Sola bad been like this, so lovely that the mightiest warriors of the age contested for her favor and lived lies without complaint. Soli tended to hide her charms under rough, loose clothing; but when she bathed-as she did even now without embarrassment- her naked body was wonderous.

    Soli had never remarked on it, but she could hardly favor his mottled skin, battered countenance and clubbed extremities. Children did not care so much about such things, but Soli would never be a child again.

    Var saw, occasionally, the literate ladies of this core Chinese culture. They were like crafted dolls, delicate and delightful, their motions constrained, their demeanors diffident In contrast, the peasant women were brutes-stout, plain, hunched of body, coarse of expression.

    Var knew that the wandering life he was making for SoIi would shape her into the peasant mold. He could not bear the thought. Increasingly it preyed upon him, and when hO saw some crone be fancied Soli's face on her.

    The background level of civilization rose as they entered the Chinese heartland. The people here were yellowish of skin and their eyes were different, and their manners tended to be almost ritualistically polite. The women were eloquent-the highborn ones. Var learned that they attended institutions somewhat like the crazy schools, that brought them to the mature state. Then, as sophisticated ladies, they married, and did not do hand labor again. House-hold servants performed the chores.

    Var decided that this would be a better life for Soli. But he didn't know how to explain this philosophy, and feared she would not understand his intent, so he didn't try.

    One night when she slept beside him in the forest, he rose stealthily. She woke, however. "Var?"

    "Have to-you know," he said, feeling a pang of guilt for his lie. To reassure her, he urinated noisily against a tree, then squatted. In a moment her breathing became even and he moved quietly away.

    Just as he passed beyond the normal hearing range, he heard something-either an animal moving, or Soli rolling over and striking dry leaves. His pang came again, quite forcefully, and he wavered and almost went back. But he heard nothing else, and forced himself to go on.

    He ran five miles back to one of the schools they had passed that day. He pounded on the gate for admittance and finally roused an old caretaker-a near-sighted, graybearded, bony man who was not pleased to be disturbed at this hour. Var tried to talk to him, but his words were evidently of the wrong dialect and inadequate to the concept. He did make the oldster understand that he had to see the authority figure for the school. With grumbling, the man retired into the bowels of the building to search that person out, while Var waited nervously outside the gate.

    Ten minutes later he was admitted to the presence of the head matron. She had obviously just gotten up, and wore a nightrobe, but he could tell from her aspect that she was sharp of mind. Her face was lined though she was heavyset, and her hair was glossy black.

    She could not understand him either, though she appeared to speak a number of dialects. Then she made a symbol on a sheet of paper, and Var knew they could coinmunicate after all. For these symbols were universal, here, and had the same meaning regardless of the dialect spoken, or even the language. Var was borderline-literate, now, so far as these symbols were concerned; he had picked up several hundred in the past few months; as had Soli, and could use them for making purchases and clarifying posted directives such as 'Radiation Ahead."

    For two hours they passed messages back and forth. At the end of that silent dialogue Var had purchased admittance for Soli to the school. He was to pay the tuition by doing brutework for the maintenance department.

    He described her location, and a party went out, armed.

    Var reported to the cellar, where the gray-bearded man showed him to a wooden bunk near the giant furnace. He was now the assistant to this man, for good or ill.

    He had sold them both into a kind of servitude. But Soli would emerge with her future secure.

    It was a month before he saw her again, for the hired help had no legitimate contact with the elite girls. But as he hauled wood and peat for the furnace, and pounded stakes for new fencing, and carried supplies for the daily wagon to the kitchen, and did the thousand things the older man had somehow managed before, he picked up hints. He mastered the common local words and received the local gossip.

    They had brought in a spitfire that night. A wild country urchin who struck out with sticks as devastatingly as a seasoned fighting man. They had threatened her with guns, but she had not yielded, and they had not dared to use them because she was supposed to be captured and trained as a lady. They had finally subdued her with a net, after suffering several casualties.

    Soli! Soli! Var ached with her misery, ashamed -to have brought this on her. How could she know that it was for the best, that she might spend the rest of her life at leisure?

    The old man shook his head. He could not understand why they should want to train a wild peasant-and an outlander at that, for she was fair of skin and round of eye. But rather attractive, he confessed, once subdued and cleaned up.

    Var realized that the man made no connection between him and Soli. This once, his discoloration had worked to his advantage. He wanted to watch, to be sure the terms of the bargain were fulfilled-but not to associate with her, for that would hurt her manufactured image. She was to be a lady; he could never be a gentleman.

    Then he was cutting back shrubbery beside the wall and she was taken for a walk inside the grounds. He saw her with a matron and three other girls, dressed in chaste gowns. He was reminded horribly of her stay in New Crete, waiting for the sacrifice. Then, as now, he had been the instrument that confined her. The whole thing suddenly seemed so similar that ho longed to grab her and run for the forest and undo what he had done.

    He averted his face, afraid of the cónsequence if she should see him now.

    The little party walked along the flowered pathway, treading in step to the murmured cadence of the matron. Each girl took tiny steps. Var heard the petite patter, aware of their motions peripherally. They were learning to walk like ladies, daintily, intriguingly.

    Var continued clipping, his back to the walk. The girls passed so close he could smell their fragrance. They did not stop. After a while they were guided inside, and Var was both relieved and saddened. It would have been folly to speak to Soli-but the urge had been almost unbearably strong.

    Regret it as he might, he knew that the school was honoring the agreement they had made. He could not be the first to break it.

    That night, as the oldster lay in the heat ready to sleep, a hooded visitor came to the cellar. The old man went to investigate, was given something, and stood aside. The figure came to stan4 over Var's bunk.

    Jarred out of his reverie, Var looked up.

    It was Soli. Her eyes were luminous under the hood.

    "You did it," she said softly.

    Var just looked at her, struck by the beauty of her features. Already the training had had its impact on her bearing, and the cosmetics had enhanced her splendor.

    "I saw you in the garden," she murmured, continuing to look down on him with an expression he did not understand.

    Then her hand came from under the cloak,' holding a slipper. Down it came against his stomach, stingingly.

    "I thought you were dead!" she cried, and now he recognized her emotion: fury. Then she turned and left.

    She had thought him dead. He had never suspected that, but in retrospect it was obvious. Attacked in the night, captured, hauled away to a strange institution without sight of him-what would her natural interpretation have been, except that he had been killed in the same, fracas? So she had resigned herself. .. and discovered, suddenly that it was a lie.

    Why had he meddled? He had never intended to have it come out that way.

    The old man returned, chuckling. Obviously he had now made the connection between the spitfire and the handyman. Would he keep the confidence? It didn't matter, since the arrangement was legitimate and Soli knew the truth.

    Var lay awake a long time, not certain whether to be pleased or saddened by Soli's attitude. The sudden sight of her had been a shocking stimulus. So lovely, so angry! Did she hate him for deceiving her? Or would she recognize the advantage he had arranged for her? Surely she could see' that they could not have wandered endlessly across the continents of the world. A beautiful girl and an ugly man. Such a life would not hurt him, of course, for he had no higher potential; indeed. It would be easy for bins to revert to the wi1d state and range the badlands. But Soli- Soli could be the Lady, graceful and cultured. He owed it to her to make that life possible.

    He still felt guilty. He still longed for her free companionship, as it, had been in the early days, before New Crete. It was impossible, for she would never be young again, but still he wished, and suffered.

    Two weeks later, as he gathered fallen wood in the forest and loaded it on a hand wagon for hauling, she came to him again. This time she was dressed in boy's clothes, with her hair concealed and artful smudges on her face. She looked like a marauding urchin-a guise she had long been versed in, as he knew.

    "I'm running away," she said. "Come with me, as you used to."

    Var grabbed her and carried her back toward the school enclosure. She could have disabled him in a number of ways, but she offered only token resistance.

    "I know you're paying for me," she said. "I hate you."

    He knew she didn't mean it, but the words stung just the same.

    "Why do you want me here?" she asked pitifully. "Why can't we tour the countryside together? That's all I want."

    Var shifted his grip and continued carrying. She was lithe in his arms, all curve and tension.

    She drew her head up and kissed him on the lips, as a woman might. As Sola, her mother, had. "Just to be with you, Var."

    Temptation smote him savagely. It was the child he remembered, but the woman had hold on his longing too. Yet he walked, unanswering.

    "Do you want me to cry?" But she didn't cry, though it would have broken him. And when he didn't answer, she murmured: "I'm sorry I hit you with my slipper." And then, when they came in sight of the buildings: "It should have been a star"

    And had she had a morningstar mace, he reflected, she might very well have bashed him with it, such was her momentary fury.

    He turned her over to a matron. As he tromped dejectedly back to the forest he heard her beginning screams, part agony, part rage. They were beating her for the infraction. The instrument was padded, so as not to leave any disfiguring mark, but he knew it hurt. And they both had known the penalty. The matron had made that clear at the outset: discipline was her watchword.

    But Soli, veteran of stick combat, could not be made to scream through pain. She was merely letting Var know, and satisfying the matron, who of course was not fooled. The ritual had to be complete, lest the other girls grow similarly wilful.

    Var was given one day off in every ten, though he was willing to work. The head matron, fair-minded, insisted on this too. There was a town near by, and his second holiday he went there to look about. But he was not comfortable and a number of the natives treated him with subtle disrespect, not desiring his company. It was so hard to know when to smile and when to react, when no circle marked the boundary between courtesy and combat. Once a young rowdy laid a hand on him and Var struck him to the ground, but it changed nothing.

    No-for him the badlands were best. He understood neither this' culture nor the American nomad culture, and was better off alone. Once he bad seen Soli through the training; he would doff civilization of any type and become completely, happily wild.

    But he remembered Soli, and knew that he was deceiving himself. He would never be happy without her, child or woman.

    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"I have found out whose men have been assembling here the past month," the oldster said.

    In the course of nearly a year Var had learned to converse with him, though he had never had occasion to learn his name. The man was always full of gossip, and Var was not interested. He bad observed the troops and known them to be the advance guard for some royal personage. Most of the girls of the school were high born, and it was a mark of distinction to graduate and de$rt in style with an armed retinue, even if one had to be hired for the purpose. Often the men assembled in advance, waiting for their masters to appear, so that as the end of term approached the school grounds resembled a battle camp. Var had jousted familiarily with some, showing off his ability with the sticks. But most were armed with handguns.