Slaves of The Klau

Komeitk Lelianr frowned. 'I don't think you realize the essential nature of Magarak or its organization.'

'You've never said a truer word. I feel like a cat in a stamp-mill every time I take out that raft. Look at it this way. Would the Klau be disturbed if I blew up their Brain?'

'I should think so. It would be a most serious matter.'

'What's bad for them is good for us. Call it diversionary tactics. That's simple enough, isn't it?' He took her silence for assent. 'Do you think you can find the Brain?'

'I think I've found it.'

'Good. And do you still think I'm crazy?'

Her glance went to his left shoulder. 'I'm not well-enough acquainted with the norm of your people to judge.'

Barch rose to his feet. He said thickly, 'About ten more minutes of double-talk, I actually would be crazy.'

He went back to the fire. The hell with them all. Explaining motives was useless; his patterns didn't fit their minds. He put his hand to his gun; here was his explanation. He met Komeitk Lelianr's sudden alarmed stare, grimaced. Now she thinks I'm planning to run amok. Very well. No point in explaining anything. Give orders, see that they're obeyed.

He strode across the room to the Lenape. There was a sudden silence; he felt the eyes of the entire tribe on his back.

'Porridge,' he said, 'you think I'm crazy. That suits me; as long as you work, think anything you like. Tomorrow I want you to load Barge Three with cases of accr. I want you to rig a detonator on the bow, on each forward corner, to go off on contact. I want you to put a cut-out switch in the anti-collision mechanism, so I can disengage it whenever I want. Do you understand?'

Porridge blinked. 'Clearly.'

'Good.' Barch walked across the floor to the entrance, slipped out into the night.

The rain had stopped; the air was strangely calm for the Palkwarkz Ztvo. Barch crossed the clearing, wandered to his raft. For a moment he considered climbing aboard, raising up into the dark sky, riding through the night. But there was no guide-light set out, the locator was in the hall, and ground, and there it stood. Barch shot at the pilot, but the splinter whistled off the dome.

Barch hesitated a moment, then cautiously approached the weapon mounted on the stern. With one eye on the pilot he inspected it, tested the movement. It spun on a swivel. It was a strange pattern-H-shaped with a long central bar, like a naval range-finder. The trigger was in an obvious position. The pilot was climbing out of the dome; Barch swung the H around, focused it as closely as possible, pressed home the trigger. There was a crackling sound; the control dome disappeared. The barge fell flat with a great squash and crush of air.

Barch turned to look at the bodies on the flat. A dozen or so squirmed, one or two crawled moaning along the stone. Barch swung the H, the crackling snapped out; a great oval spot on the flat was gouged out, seared, glossy.

A thousand feet above floated a raft with a crystal top. Barch peered through the sights. Two rafts. He moved the lever, the two merged. He pressed the trigger. The raft became a few flapping, falling pieces. No more targets. Nothing alive. Barch jumped down to the flat. He looked up to the cave mouth, saw nervous motion inside.

He picked his way among the bodies, slid along the crevice to the hall. The Lenape were huddled into an alcove, like puppies in a basket. 'Get busy,' snapped Barch. 'If you can't fight, you can at least work.'

He looked around the hall. Pedratz stood by a wall, his face bland and round as the full moon. 'Get your equipment, see if you can cut loose that gun.'

The Lenape were trooping up the passage to Big Hole, pressing close together, making nervous motions with their hands. 'Porridge,' said Barch, 'have you fixed up Barge Three as I told you?'

'The work of a moment,' said Porridge hastily.

'How much more time before we leave Magarak?'

'Difficult to say. The double port is not yet fabricated; the hull welding will be finished before the day is out.'

'Well, hurry up with Barge Three. If the Klau start to work on us seriously, we won't last very long. I think I can distract them.'

'Dangerous, dangerous.'

'Not if you fix everything exactly as I tell you to. Incidentally, you're coming with me. I can't pilot that barge.'

Porridge sagged like a loose sack of meal. Without speaking he turned, hurried up the passage. Barch seated himself at the table across from where Komeitk Lelianr worked at the locator.

'Come to anything definite?'

'Yes, I think so. On the index it's called Central Organ.'

Barch looked into the viewer, into the jungle of pastel shapes. The target ring encircled a small green square, surrounded by a blue mass shaped like an ink blot. To one side was a rusty-orange rectangle that seemed to quiver and jump as Barch looked at it; to the other a sprinkle of gray dots. Radiating away from the green square was a series of minute red capillaries, so faint as to be hardly noticable. 'So that's the Brain.'

'Nothing else seems likely. I cannot be sure, of course.'

'Is it far?'

'It's a third of the way around the planet, in the Central District.'

'Central District? More complicated than Quodaras?'

'Quodaras is a newer development, only a few hundred years old.'

'Oh. Well, it makes no particular difference.'

There was silence for a moment or so. Then, frowning into the viewer, she said, ' Roy -do you still think this plan of yours is feasible?'

Barch made a disgusted sound. 'The Klau just lost a barge-load of Podruods. Next time they'll send something heavier. We can't stand up under any serious attack. We've got to get their minds off us long enough to make ourselves scarce. We're walking along a precipice right now. And I've got work to do. I've got to see that there's enough raw material aboard for the sustenators. I've got to get Barge Three loaded with abiloid and a couple crates of accr.'

The day passed for Barch like the day before his execution, each second, each minute stretched far out, the hours paradoxically compressed.

The work moved with exasperating slowness; Barch ducked back and forth into Big Hole, standing fretfully over the Lenape, convinced of their inefficiency but unable to comment because he did not understand what they were doing. He barked at the women who were carrying domestic utensils into the barge, raged at Flatface and the labor crew for spending their time gaping at the field of Podruod corpses instead of carrying aboard the logs of green timber they had cut.

Pedratz successfully cut loose the heavy weapon on the stem of the war-barge. Barch carried it slung under the raft to a niche just inside the cave mouth; from here he could command almost the whole of the valley. Suppose the Klau came while he was off on his final mission? He called to Chevrr, the dour Splang. 'Come over here a minute.'

Chevrr approached suspiciously. Barch explained the working of the gun to him, made Chevrr focus on several objects near and far to his satisfaction.

'Now you stay up here. You're the guard. If you see the Klau coming, don't shoot, call for me. If I'm not here, use your own discretion.'

Chevrr made a sound of acquiescence. Barch strode through the hall, climbed the passage into Big Hole.

Porridge was standing beside Barge Three, looking up at the dome. 'Porridge!' barked Barch. The Lenape turned his head; the round opal eyes met Barch's hot hazel eyes without expression. 'When are you going to have that barge ready?'

'It's all ready now.'

'Oh,' said Barch. 'The explosive aboard?'

'Everything.'

'Two cases of accr?'